


Starless

by peppersweet



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Because of Reasons, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Eventual Smut, F/M, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), I love angst, Loss of Virginity, Mention of FinnPoe, No really I LOVE angst, Post-TROS fic, Real Reylo Hours Who Up, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rescue: A Ben Solo Story, Some brief dark side Rey, Spongebob narrator voice: nine years later, Throne Sex, Time Skips, Trauma Conga Line, World Between Worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:14:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22387762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peppersweet/pseuds/peppersweet
Summary: For a moment, she thought she heard the voice of her old master, whispering like the shifting sands of Jakku:this isn’t going to go the way you think.She watched herself kiss him. The first and only kiss of her life. The sweetest.And as he finally slipped out of consciousness and fell backwards, she was there to catch him.This is my will. Ben Solo will live. I will make it so.*Almost a decade after the Battle of Exegol, Rey travels to the World Between Worlds, ready to steal Ben Solo away from a fate she can no longer accept. The man she brings back with her is broken, lost in the sudden silence of his own mind.On a backwater planet lightyears from the Core, far away from the Jedi, the Sith, and all that defined them, can they forge a new path?
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 34
Kudos: 102





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> To preface this, I'll say that this is my first foray into fic since I stopped writing around six years ago - so I apologise in advance for the excess of commas and the places I put them. I was off work for ten days over Christmas, saw TROS about four times, listened to a lot of MCR and got really in my feelings, and this was the result. I hope you enjoy it! 
> 
> This one goes out to WritingQuill, as thanks for the near-daily stream of Ben Solo content via Insta and for encouraging my delve back into fic.
> 
> If you're interested, I made a playlist to accompany this fic (and Reylo generally as a ship) here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3Lp3a8rgMOPK9f8Lx9ztPQ - I listened to it near-constantly during writing. The fic title comes from the song of the same name by King Crimson. If this fic has a theme tune, it's totally Rodent by Burial.

Rey was neither here nor there. She stood in a river that sometimes surged to her knees, but mostly ebbed around her, flowing on into an endless darkness. Above her there were stars, more than she could ever hope to count. 

The Togruta woman she’d studied with had told her to expect the infinite sky, but not the river. Perhaps it appeared differently to every traveller. 

The current tugged at her ankles, willing her to walk on.

 _I have other plans_ , she thought, and cut across the flow. 

There were portals ahead, all twins of the one she had crossed through to get here. Smooth, dull surfaces of a kind of black glass or polished rock. Unremarkable. She chose one at random, and pressed her hand against it.

The woman had told her that this bit would be the hardest. There was a lot to choose from. The trick wasn’t to want, but to ask. 

Rey studied the portal for a few minutes, then decided it was not the right one, and moved several to her left. Again, she pressed her palm against the smooth surface and watched. Again she moved on, having seen nothing more than the ministrations of nocturnal alien creatures.

The ninth portal was the one she wanted.

Passing through the dark glass was like walking through rainfall. A sudden sensation of cold across her shoulders, and then the atmosphere changed, full of static, dry as a bone. Her vision went white, burned by a sudden burst of lightning.

There she was, lying amongst ash and broken stone on the ground. A lightsaber on each side of her body, both long since buried in the sands of Tatooine. She looked small in death. Thin and pale. But that wasn’t surprising. She had given all she could to the Jedi, to the Resistance. There was little left that was Rey and Rey alone.

But Rey was not here to dwell on her death. At the sound of falling rock, she turned, and saw Ben Solo heave himself out of a crack in the floor. Even through the fog of time, she felt the pain, the grief, the anger that he projected - the way his emotions bled through the atmosphere like a fresh blot of blood on cloth. 

He was dying, she knew. Regardless of what he did next, his time ended here. On Exegol. Perhaps it was always meant to end here.

 _Rey?_ a voice called, only a whisper.

She watched him limp his way over to her body. Watched him fall. Grasp at a pain in his side. Heard the low howl of grief he couldn’t help but release as he crawled over and took her in his arms, unable to see the alive and breathing Rey who stood only feet away. 

_How little we had_ , she thought. _This was all._

She watched him place a hand on her stomach, watched as he closed his eyes and used the last of his diminishing energy to revive her. Of course he’d been able to do that. Everything she knew how to do, he did too; that was a gift of their bond. Their dyad.

For a moment, she thought she heard the voice of her old master, whispering like the shifting sands of Jakku: _this isn’t going to go the way you think._

She watched herself kiss him. The first and only kiss of her life. The sweetest.

And as Ben Solo finally slipped out of consciousness and fell backwards, she was there to catch him.

*

Dragging Ben was difficult. He was so much taller and heavier than she was, and at the moment he was dead weight, his clothes soaking up the water of the neither-here-nor-there place. She came to a stop, pulling him into her lap and crossing her arms over his chest. Reaching out. He was still there. Just a flicker, but there...

The air was wrought with whispering now, whispers she knew were from force users of old, masters and students alike. Rey squeezed her eyes shut and focused on him, feeling the weight of his presence in the force as her hands spread across the grimy fabric of his shirt. If she reached far enough - so far that she felt the muscles in her neck straining, as though her mind was on the edge of implosion - she could isolate that presence in the force. A presence that drew her in like a planet's gravity well. She grasped the edge of that presence in her mind and visualised it growing, becoming stronger. Not so much the gravity well of a planet, but of the entire Core. An irresistible pull. Her arms ached. The whispering was at her ear now.

_No, Rey. This is not the will of the force._

She pushed that thought away, reciting an old mantra of the Guardians of the Whills: _I am one with the force. And the force is with me._

The force had no will. The force simply was. 

Two sets of lungs breathed, now, where there had only been one, and he began to stir in her arms. A wave of nausea and exhaustion rolled over her. It still felt as though her head would burst.

 _This is not the will of the force,_ the whisper repeated. 

_It is my will,_ she thought. Sparks danced across her vision. She fumbled with her tunic, eventually closing her hand around a cold metal stim canister in her pocket, scavenged from a crashed Star Destroyer. 

_This is my will_ , she thought, and stabbed the sharp tip of the canister into Ben's chest. His body lurched, falling out of her grip, and then the two of them were sprawled side by side on the unsteady floor. He took a shuddering gasp, and his eyes met hers.

'Rey,' he murmured.

She smiled. It felt as though her remaining energy was being spent on keeping her head upright. Maybe he'd need to be the one dragging her along now. But she gathered herself and got shakily to her feet, offering him her hand.

'We don't have a lot of time. I can explain later.'

He stared at her for a moment, lips parted as if to speak.

'Ben, please,’

Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.

 _This is my will_ , she repeated, hooking her arms under his shoulders again and dragging him back through the flowing river, back to the portal she’d come through. _This is my will. Ben Solo will live. I will make it so._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> P.s if you're here for the explicit rating alone, I feel ya. Chapter 4/5 onwards.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Chewbacca is piloting. We’re about five hours out from Lah’mu. Do you have any questions?’
> 
> Ben strangled out a whisper: ‘Why?’
> 
> ‘Why? Well,’ Finn inclined his head in the direction of the Falcon’s secondary hold. ‘Rey, for reasons known only to the force, has chosen you as her hill to die on. For now, please try not to be a dead hill, and rest.'

A storm was rolling in across the sea. The air was charged with static; Finn could feel the hair on the back of his neck prickle in anticipation.

'That's four hours gone,' he said.

Chewbacca murmured something in agreement. Finn's Shriiyywook still wasn't too strong - as a language, it was built of guttural noises he couldn't quite get his tongue or ears around - but he got the gist. 

'I'll give her ten more minutes before I go in,' he said. Instinctively, his hand went to the saber holstered at his belt. The hilt was already slick with rainwater. 'She said it would take a while.'

But Chewbacca was nervous, he could tell. And anything that made a Wookie nervous was a bad omen indeed. Finn was nervous too, he admitted. Whatever Rey had told him, this was _Ren_ they were rescuing. What if the whole thing was just a long con by Palpatine? Would they even make it off the island alive? Or would the long trip into the Unknown Regions, here to the uncharted marble of a planet called Ahch-To, end with both he and Chewbacca bisected by a lightsaber?

His thoughts were disrupted by a sudden presence.

'She's back. Chewie, get ready-'

A furred hand clamped onto his shoulder. Finn knew this move wasn't to reassure him, but to make Chewie feel more secure. 

The ground shook. Then, with a crash, the mirrored surface before them shattered, a yellow lightsaber forcing through. Rey appeared, hunched over, saber in one hand and the other hooked under an unconscious Kylo Ren. 

Finn's stomach turned. Unconscious or not, the sight of Ren still struck fear in him - the memory of falling into snow with his spine ablaze, throat suddenly choked by the smell of his own burning flesh -

'We need to get to the Falcon,' Rey shouted. 'Quickly! I don't think we have too long - I don't think this place will-'

The ground shook again, cutting her short. It had gone cold, suddenly, and a wind had picked up - not from the storm, but from the passageway Rey had just come through. Through the force, Finn was struck by sudden dread, a spike of turmoil that had nothing to do with Ren's lifeless body.

'Help,' Rey had turned to Chewbacca. 'Please.'

Chewbacca growled. Fear and anger coursed from him in waves, sharp and bitter. 

'I'll do it,' Finn stepped forward. He didn't want to lay a finger on Ren if he could help it, but he still crouched and, alongside Rey, hoisted the unconscious man's arm over his shoulder so the two of them could walk him shakily back to the Falcon.

Rey, her grimy face set in a frown, motioned to Chewbacca to lead the way. 

The wind blew harder - the storm had finally made landfall - and as they rounded a corner, a wave crashed against the rocks and showered them in stinging salt water. Finn reached out with the force, tentatively feeling for Rey's presence, trying to read her emotions - but she was closed off, determined, her mind set on the Falcon ahead. Then there was no time for thinking as the wind lashed against them, making balance a chore. Ren was a heavy weight, his head occasionally slumping against Finn's shoulder as if he were a drunk comrade. 

Just as they reached the Falcon's gangway, Finn chanced a look behind him - and saw that the entire cave seemed to have collapsed into the sea. More than that, their route was marked by splatters of blood that decorated the grey rock like gaudy flowers.

'Rey, what-' he began, but she silenced him with a look, and together they hoisted Ren up into the Falcon's main cabin.

'We need to go,' she said, vaulting over a storage crate to follow Chewbacca into the cockpit.

'In this storm? We'll crash!'

Chewbacca howled from further along the ship. 

'You're right,' Rey yelled. 'Finn, get some scans!'

The Falcon's engines shuddered into life before the door had even closed. Finn braced himself against one last wave, and then the ship was away, saltwater sloshing on the cabin floor, lapping up against Ren's inert body.

'Medical droid,' Finn whispered to himself. He'd have preferred to sit in the co-pilot's chair alongside Chewbacca, but Rey was the better pilot, after all. And for now, he _was_ her Padawan. 

He flipped the latches on the nearest crate and powered on a small medical droid that had lived on the Falcon ever since the Battle of Crait. With a series of hurried beeps, it rolled across the slick floor and began to scan Ren.

Then there was an almighty crash, and the Falcon lurched at a sharp angle, as if the rear engines had just been slapped out of the sky. The droid shot off into one corner with a scream. Finn found himself crouching against the wall, keeping Ren in place with one foot.

'Lightning strike?' he yelled.

'Landslide,' Rey yelled back. 

Just as the ship righted itself, Ren's eyes snapped open.

If Finn felt disgust at the sight of him - and maybe a little scared - Ren's reaction was only of fear. His eyes were wide, roving back and forth, taking it all in - the Falcon, Finn, the droid, the pooling saltwater.

'Yeah, I'm not happy about it either,' Finn muttered, searching in the crate for a medpack. If Ren was scared, at least he had the upper hand. Experimentally, he reached out in the force - a racing mind, a fog of confusion, an endless internal screaming as fresh pain bloomed in broken and bruised limbs -

Finn turned back, medpack in hand, to see that Ren was sitting up, staring at the holochess table in the corner. 

'I've got Bacta spray,' Finn said. 'So you stop bleeding all over the floor.'

Ren inclined his head to look at him for a second. Even like this, bleeding and confused, he still had shades of the intimidating commander Finn had seen in the First Order. Taller than him, with broad shoulders, and a piercing stare Finn had rarely seen unmasked.

Finn held up the Bacta spray. 'So...?'

Ren lurched forward, suddenly, with a hacking cough; blood sprayed across Finn's tunic.

'Rey!' he shouted. 'We have blood!'

'Let us get out of the atmosphere first!' she shouted back.

'Did you hear that?' Finn said, as Ren collapsed back onto the floor. 'Let's get out of the atmosphere before you start coughing up your guts.'

The medical droid, reoriented, trundled back over and restarted its scans. Ren's eyes still swivelled wildly, as if trying to take in every detail of the cabin - they were bloodshot, Finn noticed, bright and stained red in a face that was smeared with grime and ash. Fresh blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth and dripped down his pale chin. 

Finn might not have been able to heal using the force, nor could he manipulate objects and people as well as Rey could, but he was good at reading into emotion, good at sensing the shape of someone's thoughts - and all he could sense from Ren was pure, abject terror.

Whatever happened on Exegol, Finn thought, Rey had got off lightly.

A new presence entered the force, one of taut worry, and moments later Rey was running into the room, her hair shaken loose from its bun. She had told him about Ren (or Ben?), and about how he had sacrificed himself for her - without going into detail - but the sight of her leaning down to gently rest a hand against his cheek was still a shock. 

But they'd been over this before, Finn thought, clenching his jaw shut before he could say anything. Whatever choices she made, he trusted her. Even if he would have left the ex-Supreme Leader on Exegol forever. 

'Finn,' her voice was softer now. 'Can you check the readouts from the droid? Datapad is over there.'

Finn grabbed the datapad and loaded up the droid's scans. His stomach turned - not for the half-man, half-corpse on the floor, but for all he meant to Rey. 

'Did you use the Bacta spray yet?' Rey was asking. 'Has the droid given any more stim injections?' She was thumbing blood away from the corner of Ren's mouth, which was opening and closing as if he was trying to speak. Her other hand fluttered over his forehead, smoothing wet hair away from his eyes. 'I don't understand. He seems worse.'

Finn tried his best to project calm through the force, but he barely had enough of it himself. He didn't quite have the steely emotional suppression of the Jedi of old. 

'Because he's dying, Rey. I don't know what...'

He passed her the datapad that showed Ren's status; the lung that was collapsing, the internal bleeding, the shock that was seizing his body and stealing his breath. 

She didn't even look at him. 'Finn, can you go up and help Chewie?' Her voice was steady, calm, even as her hands shook on the edges of the datapad. She was so tired, he could sense that in the force; every part of her ached in some new way. 'I've got something to do, but I won't be able to co-pilot after I do it. Not for a while.’

Finn nodded, and squeezed her shoulder as he stood and passed. Her tunic was sodden, either with saltwater or sweat.

He turned back just before reaching the cockpit, and saw that she was bent over Ren's body, hands splayed against his chest, her eyes shut tight. 

*

Ben remembered Rey; so vibrant, so alive, her face only inches from his. Her smile. A smile he would have burned his galaxy down to ashes to see, if only he’d known how sweet it was before. 

He remembered her ducking forwards to kiss him, and the collision of their lips - the taste of blood, and sweat, and grit, and char - and how her fingers ran through his hair, even as his hands began to lose their grip and his vision darkened at the edges.

Then there was a memory of her face, only it was older now, and she wore her hair a different way. She seemed to float amongst the stars. A deep space traveller. 

Now, he was somehow on the Millenium Falcon.

He had tried to sit up, but he could not will his body to bend that way, nor did it want to - every muscle screamed in pain with the slightest movement. Every breath was shallow, accompanied by a lightning-hot burn in his left lung. He was lying on the bench beside the holochess table. And the floor was crusted with dried salt and blood. Was he a boy again? Had his life been a dream to this point? He strained into the force, spreading his mind throughout the ship he had known so well before the age of ten. No, he could not feel his father’s unmistakeable presence here. Traces of it, perhaps, but Solo was not on the ship.

_Because I killed him,_ he thought.

Grief welled within him again, as it had done for the past two years. Grief that had always simmered in the background of his thoughts, until something would cause it to spill forth in a torrent. He had never been good at holding himself closed. 

_Monster. You proved him correct._

This was where his father had taught him to play holochess. Where they had breakfasted on long flights, and where, later, Uncle Luke had brought out training droids and a wooden facsimile of a lightsaber to start him on his Jedi path. Where he -

Chewie was on board. He could sense him. 

If only he could stand. Here was evidence of all he had burned and razed to the ground, all he had destroyed to get to this point. A broken body. A broken spirit. Back at the start. If he could will his body to move, or grasp the pain and push it down, he could find an escape pod and jettison out into deep space -

Footsteps. Ben squinted against the light as someone entered. _Not Chewie_ , he thought, _please_ -

‘I’m not Chewie,’ a man said. ‘Yeah, I hear you.’

Instantly Ben closed off his thoughts, focusing instead on the man’s face, which was broad and placid, devoid of expression.

‘Hi. I’m Finn,’ the man said. ‘You tried to kill me in a forest a while ago. Rey is sleeping, so I’m looking after you.’

Ben tried to speak, but could only manage a hoarse whisper. ‘FN-2187.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ Finn frowned and drew a datapad from the holochess table. ‘Do you want to know what injuries you have? A couple hours ago, your major injury was dying, but Rey fixed that. Somehow. Currently, you have…’ he scrolled down the datapad. ‘Four broken ribs, a broken leg, a sprained wrist, and a whole lot of bruises. You also lost a lot of blood. Fortunately, we came prepared.’

Finn set the datapad aside. He looked different as Rey had, different to the last time Ben had seen him in First Order holos. His hair had grown long, twisted into dreadlocks that hung over his weathered face and reached to the shoulders of his homespun tunic. 

‘Chewbacca is piloting. We’re about five hours out from Lah’mu. Do you have any questions?’

Ben strangled out a whisper: ‘Why?’

‘Why? Well,’ Finn inclined his head in the direction of the Falcon’s secondary hold. ‘Rey, for reasons known only to the force, has chosen you as her hill to die on. For now, please try not to be a dead hill, and rest. I'll be up front if you need anything.'

Finn was halfway to the cockpit passageway when he added, 'Or if you start dying again.'

_I was dead,_ Ben thought. _Am._

Surely this was some form of afterlife. The Falcon, his vision of Rey floating amidst stars, a force-sensitive Stormtrooper sent to look after him... 

He was certain he'd spent whatever life he had on Rey. He had made sure of it. It had been a considered, final choice. 

If he focused hard enough on a specific loose screw on the side of the holochess table, he found he could push his pain aside. Move his leaden arms, ever so slightly. Count to ten, and then shift over, bringing himself closer to the edge of the bench -

There was a needle in the crook of his elbow. He pawed uselessly at it with a numb, heavy hand. If he kept pawing, kept dragging his shaking fingers over it, he could wiggle it loose, and then -

A sharp shock of pain. The needle jumped out of his skin, trickling a clear solution across the floor. Blood welled at the puncture site, bright and vital. If he concentrated again, he could move his legs and swing them over the sides of the bench. Plant two feet on the floor, and -

Ben crumpled as his broken leg gave way, narrowly avoiding knocking himself out on the holochess table as he came down heavily on his side. Something seared in his chest. He grit his teeth, parcelling the pain to the side again, and clawed at the ground. The escape pods weren’t too far away, from memory. If he could crawl to one quickly enough, nobody could stop him. And then he could be gone and leave the Millennium Falcon behind for good. 

More footsteps. _Not Finn again,_ he thought. But they came from the direction of the crew quarters, and soon Rey rounded the corner. 

‘Oh, Ben,’ she said. She almost swayed where she stood. ‘I’m too tired for this.’

Like always, she was a sudden, brilliant beacon in the force. Her sharp, lovely face was smeared with grime, and her hair - now worn in a half-up, half-down style that reminded him of the time they’d fought against Snoke’s guard on the Supremacy - was in disarray. 

Still lovely. Still grimy. Rey was always a little grimy.

He had stopped trying to crawl his way across the Falcon without really realising. In his exertion, he had reopened wounds that had only been treated with bacta spray. His vision shimmered and swam as pain returned to him, as the sight of Rey derailed his thoughts.

She crossed the room and knelt beside him. Laid a cool, firm hand on his forehead. 

‘Please sleep,’ she said.

He did not resist. Could not, when she had called on the force to will him to rest. His eyes fluttered closed, and he was soon lost in dreaming.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There had been times like this in the year after the Battle of Crait, where Rey had woken in the night to see him curled up on the other side of the room, awake and restless, and a thousand light years distant. She'd done everything she could to sever their force bond, then, but he had a habit of popping up when her guard was down - or when he was on her mind, which was inevitably at night.
> 
> It only made her sad, then, in those moments where she was half-asleep and he was just out of reach, orbiting another system's star. He'd had his chance to come with her. He'd had his chance to make good all the wrong he'd done.

They landed on Lah'mu just after dawn. Bleary-eyed and aching all over, Rey helped Finn carry Ben out of the Falcon and into the small hut she called her home. She was too tired to call upon the force to lift him, and Finn wasn’t confident enough to think he could levitate Ben by himself. So they carried him on a makeshift stretcher, which only made her arms go numb. 

Chewie stayed with the Falcon, growling some excuse about post-flight checks and overdue maintenance. But Rey could sense how sad the journey had made him, and didn’t press the topic. 

Her home on Lah'mu was really just a single room, with a narrow cot against one wall, a makeshift galley, and a homebuilt fresher in a lean-to just by the door. Finn had taken a tent in the garden for his stay. Beyond the patch of land that was officially Rey’s, with its moisture-farming equipment and work-shed, it was several dozen clicks until the nearest settlement. She had an unparalleled view of the night sky, and every star dusted upon it.

Ben would have to take her cot, they reasoned, while he healed. Their original plan of using the Falcon as a living space was shot down when Chewie suddenly remembered a thing he had to attend to on Takodana. 

‘Maybe we could go with you,’ Finn had offered. ‘I’m sure we’d find some medcentre there that would help us.’

Chewie whined, and then that suggestion was buried too.

With Finn’s help, Rey managed to get Ben arranged in what she hoped was a comfortable position. She’d managed to trade for an old Resistance Flexpoly bacta suit for the occasion, in the absence of an actual medcentre with bacta tanks and proper droids. Finn, to his credit, was not squeamish about helping her pull off Ben’s clothes and dress him in the suit, although she was sure it had been his least favourite part of the day. It was a matter of business for her. She had seen it all before, in those occasional moments where the force had connected them with no apparent reasoning or warning. 

Then there was nothing more to do than prepare protein loaf, splash her face with water, and eventually crawl into a bedroll in Finn’s tent, from which she could see the flickering lights of the Falcon’s medical droid attending to Ben in the hut.

She almost wished she could sleep in the bacta suit herself. It had been a long time since she’d been this bone-tired, this full of aches and complaints. But it had been a very long day, and they had travelled so much of the galaxy. And beyond. 

‘Can you feel him in the force?’ Finn whispered, from his own bedroll on the other side of the tent. ‘I can. Even though he’s sleeping.’

‘Yes,’ she said. 

Ben had always had a distinctive signature in the force. It was dull, now, but still there. That little tug in the depths of her chest. A gravity well, pulling her forwards. She had missed it. 

‘I wonder if he knows how long it’s been,’ Finn said. ‘Although, I don’t think he knows much of anything yet.’ 

‘We’ll see,’ she said. 

If Finn had anything else to ask her about Ben, she didn’t hear it. Sleep came swift and quiet. 

*

Rey awoke sometime in the afternoon to pale light streaming through the tent door and Finn shaking her shoulder.

‘Rey, it’s Chewie, he just-’

Finn was drowned out by the unmistakeable whine and rumble of the Falcon’s sublight engines starting up. She jumped out of her bedroll, tugging on the heavy tunic she’d discarded before sleep, then ran into the garden in bare feet just in time to see the Falcon make a turn and bank into the misty sky.

‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop him,’ Finn caught up to her. ‘He said he couldn’t…’

Already thousands of feet above them, the Falcon vanished in a streak of blue as it jumped to hyperspace.

‘Of course he couldn’t,’ she said, keeping her voice as level, as calm as possible. 

‘He left the droid and some stuff to repair your X-wing, but…’ Finn squinted at the spot the Falcon had been in moments ago. ‘Hell, that was my ride home.’ 

Without really thinking, she walked across the garden to the hut, finding Ben still asleep on the cot, the medical droid beeping lazily on the floor beside him. She couldn’t have expected Chewie to deal with this well, but still, a heat rose inside her, and she was tempted to take the droid and smash it into the floor, to see something shattered and broken. 

She steeled herself. Anger had never done her well before. She could not dictate where Chewie went with the Falcon or how he chose to help. He had owed a life debt to Han and Han alone. And Han was gone. 

Ben had been sure of that. 

‘Hey, I need to borrow your com,’ Finn called out, breaking her away from her thoughts. ‘I’ll need to get Poe to come pick me up. He’s gonna hate that…’

‘Yeah,’ she agreed. ‘He will.’ 

*

In his dream, he is a Padawan again, with hair that curls just over his ears and, on one side, is braided down his back. Luke has asked him to go out and look for more of the six-leaved Zhilol herbs that grow a hike away from the temple, which suits everyone fine, since just about nobody likes Ben, and he doesn’t much like anybody either.

He takes his time on the walk, (which Luke will probably chastise him for later, because they have a lot to study before lunch, and the herbs are a key part of the stew his fellow Padawans are making) enjoying the way that the force makes his feet light, and lets him leap from rock-to-rock high above the path, without fear of falling. He enjoys the way sunlight touches his skin and, when he has picked a sufficient amount of herbs, he enjoys using the force to pluck small bunches of bright flowers from the ground and scatter them in the air like confetti. 

_Alone again, my friend?_

_Yes, Snoke, Luke sent me to pick herbs._

Snoke chuckles, light-years distant (wherever he is - he hasn’t told Ben that yet). _Sending you to pick herbs while he teaches his other Padawans the secrets of the Jedi? My, you truly are his best student._

Ben woke with a start. The dream stayed settled on him briefly, like a layer of dust, almost convincing him he could touch his hair and run his fingers down his Padawan braid again - and then his vision sharpened, and the memory of being fifteen faded. 

The room around him came into focus. An unlovely, ramshackle room, with clay-daubed walls and a mismatch of furniture and equipment, mostly salvage. A room that was an entire house in itself, he realised, with a tiny galley kitchen stocked with packaged rations and a fresher just visible through the open door. He thought to himself that he’d had cabins on First Order shuttles bigger than this room. 

He was in some sort of bacta suit, something plastic and cool that numbed his limbs. He’d never been in one before - they were reserved for injuries in the field, and Snoke had always thought it prudent that he walk his wounds off until he got to his quarters. For morale. 

And at that thought, and with the lingering final moment of his dream still in his mind, he lay still and waited for the familiar voice to speak to him. Snoke, Palpatine, Vader...they never stayed quiet for long. 

The memory of the previous day - or previous few days, he thought, feeling the itch of fresh stubble on his chin - resurfaced. Going to Exegol, and then waking up on the Falcon - and now here. Where was it the ex-Stormtrooper had said they were? Lah'mu? It wasn't a name that registered with him. Somewhere small, somewhere insignificant. 

Somewhere cold, he thought, judging by how fresh the air felt in his lungs.

There was movement just outside the door; he turned his head to see Rey, in a heavy blue tunic and muddy trousers, her hair limp and loose around her shoulders. She looked over at him, eyes narrowed, lips parted, as if she meant to speak.

Another figure came into view; Finn, the ex-Trooper, in a poncho that was spattered with mud. His wary eyes flickered to meet Ben's. 

'He's doing fine,' Rey said. Her hand went to the doorframe, as if she planned to come in. But she evidently thought better of it, turning to Finn. 'Should we keep going?'

'I can't stand any more mud,' Finn complained, but followed her as she walked away into the garden.

 _Don't go,_ Ben thought, hoping Rey would catch it. He had spent so much of his life since they met thinking of her, and the things he would do once she let him close enough. Those thoughts had carried him to sleep from time to time, after Snoke was gone, when he no longer cared who was in his head. 

Through the door, he could see Rey and Finn in the garden, chatting as they worked through a series of stretches. He would fall asleep again soon, he was sure; the bacta would have somnolent drugs in it. 

He saw them cross over to a cairn, from which Finn lifted stones one by one, and built a new cairn a few metres away. 

They sparred with wooden sticks, flimsy imitations of lightsabers.

They meditated, side by side.

They ate a protein bread lunch from a small cloth wrap.

They sparred with lightsabers, sending trails of sparks across the dimming sky. 

They floated stones to one another.

The sun set. Daylight here was short-lived, he noticed. He had not been able to sleep.

Rey stood in the doorway. Face taut with worry.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he replied, truthfully.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said, and began preparing portions of the weird protein bread that seemed to constitute her entire diet, if the rations in the kitchen were anything to go by. He choked mouthfuls of it down, if only to make her happy. 

She poured water into his mouth. He swallowed. 

He began to drift off.

Rey curled up on the floor beside his cot, and watched him until he fell asleep.

*

There had been times like this in the year after the Battle of Crait, where Rey had woken in the night to see him curled up on the other side of the room, awake and restless, and a thousand light years distant. She'd done everything she could to sever their force bond, then, but he had a habit of popping up when her guard was down - or when he was on her mind, which was inevitably at night. 

It only made her sad, then, in those moments where she was half-asleep and he was just out of reach, orbiting another system's star. He'd had his chance to come with her. He'd had his chance to make good all the wrong he'd done. 

Instead, he was here, back from the dead, broken and bruised in a second-hand bacta suit. 

She pushed the hair back from his forehead, where it was slicked down with sweat. He looked pale, ashen, his eye sockets ringed with dark circles and a yellowing bruise on his cheekbone. A scab on his lip cracked when he saw her and smiled - just the smallest smile, but sweet and there.

Rey took the datapad from a shelf above the cot and checked the droid’s latest reports. All was well. On the mend. He was healing.

‘You’re so much better,’ she told him, and he smiled again. 

‘Rey,’ he whispered. She reflected that her name was all he’d really said since she had dragged him back from Exegol. As if the word was new to him, and he was testing it out to see how it felt on his tongue. He _was_ new, she reasoned. He was just Ben, now. 

‘You’ve been here for almost four days,’ she said, still smoothing her palm across his forehead. The gesture made it easier to focus on talking. ‘Mostly sleeping. We’re on Lah'mu, a planet in the Outer Rim. In the Raioballo sector. Right at the end of a hyperspace lane. I brought you here from Exegol with Finn and Chewie.’

Then, Ben said his first complete sentence since they’d found him.

‘You look different.’

‘I do,’ she agreed. ‘But that’s - well, that’s because it’s been about nine years since we first went to Exegol. I’ve lived here for four years now. Finn is my Padawan, for a few months anyway, and that’s why he came too, in case I needed help-’

But Ben’s face had gone slack at the words _nine years_ , and he now stared somewhere past her shoulder, through the ceiling. 

‘Yes, nine years. Although it won’t feel like that to you, only a moment, really…I found a way back, through something called the Vergence Scatter - Luke had written about it. I went through that, and…I took you back. I’ll explain properly another time. You’re tired now…’

‘I died,’ he murmured. ‘I was meant to die.’ 

‘No, you weren’t. I couldn’t let you. I…’

She realised it was easier to show him, and pressed her hand against his forehead more firmly now, immersing herself in the memory of Exegol - his smile going slack at the edges, his eyes closing, him falling back with his hand still clasped in hers, and then fading -

 _But you didn’t fade into the force,_ she thought. _Because I never saw you again. Not like Luke. So I went to get you._

When she drew back, he had closed his eyes.

‘I was meant to die,’ he repeated.

‘No. You were meant to live.’ 

He kept his eyes shut tight, as if waiting for a different answer. 

‘It’s so quiet,’ he finally said. ‘Are you sure?’

She wasn’t sure how to respond, and so began to tuck loose strands of hair behind his ears. He had always been self-conscious of them, Leia had told her once. He had worried about his ears, once upon a time, when there hadn’t been much else to worry about. 

‘I meant to die,’ he said. 

Rey kept smoothing his hair, mulling over her next words.

‘You did, I suppose. But I couldn’t accept that.’

 _I don’t know if I understand,_ he thought, the words carrying through their bond and into her mind. _I didn’t think death was something you could choose not to accept._

 _There are no rules I could have followed,_ she thought back. 

_I’m sure the Jedi would disagree._

_Well, I’m not a Jedi._

‘You’re not?’ he said aloud.

‘Like you said. I’m different.’ 

_All the same. This is not something I deserve._

_I disagree._

_Do you? You know the things I have done, Rey._

_I know you were used. I know you gave your life for me. I know you loved me._

If Ben had a response to that, he was silent both in thought and speech. 

_You deserve a life, Ben._

_Is that what you really believe?_

His eyes opened, briefly, to meet hers, then fluttered closed again. She felt him slipping out of consciousness again, and his thoughts slurred drowsily.

_Rey. You know what I have done. What I deserve. Rey._

She let her hand move lazily down his face, touching the curve of his nose, the corner of his mouth, the bristle of stubble on his chin. _I never had time to do this before,_ she thought, but he had already fallen back asleep. Her hand then went to his chest, flattening just over his heart, and she let the slightest bit of energy flow into him - just enough to tide him over, like a dose of medicine, but not so much that it tired her out. They had the luxury of time now. 

_I know what you've done,_ she thought. _But I'd rather you tell me._

Before she could stop herself, she closed her eyes and fell, slowly, into his dreams.

*

He wakes with a start to find himself laid out on a stretcher on the floor of an Upsilon-class shuttle. A medical droid hovers above him, at the limits of his blurred vision, spraying cooling bacta over his face and neck. There is fiery heat there, searing pain, and the smell of burnt flesh.

‘Ah, Sir, you’re awake, we’re only a few minutes’ flight to the _Supremacy_ -’

He raises his hand and the young officer standing to attention beside him falls silent. He did not need to use the force; his men know the scope of his powers too well.

Above the whine of the shuttle’s engines and the whirring of the medical droid, a low voice speaks.

_You will return to your quarters and make yourself presentable. And then you will report to me._

He presses a shaking hand to the ache on his side, where he was struck by a bowcaster not long ago. The pain grows sharper with every breath. 

He sees it all happen again; his father’s face going slack, his body pitching off the bridge and falling into the depths of Starkiller Base like a doll. It plays in his mind on repeat as the shuttle docks in the _Supremacy’s_ hangar and he leaves the ship with a group of anonymous, silent troopers. If he closes his eyes, the vision only becomes stronger. His father falls forever. His saber never goes dark. His emotions ricochet between nausea and triumph, disgust and relief. He could cry. Or scream. But he cannot give his men any more reasons to distrust him. 

Snoke has directed them to land in the furthest hangar from his quarters. There is no available transport. He has to call upon the force to help him walk, to place one unsteady foot before the other and move trembling legs.

Snoke does not speak again until he reaches his quarters. 

_You degrade yourself, Kylo Ren. Bested in combat by an untrained feral girl._

The feral desert girl; he sees her wolfish snarl, her bared teeth, as she slashes the Skywalker lightsaber across his face.

He peels singed armorweave fabric from his fresh wounds. The sensation makes him see stars. 

_This was intended as the completion of your training, but it has broken you._

Here, alone in his quarters, he does not need to use the force to create the appearance of being able to walk, and so he crawls into the fresher, leaving a slick of blood across the floor. The cold water hits his skin, hits the bowcaster wound, and the sudden flare of pain makes him dry-heave into the drain, again and again, until his throat is raw.

_She is strong with the force. Stronger than you, today. Perhaps I should make her my new apprentice._

‘No,’ he growls. ‘I will not fail you again.’

_You have said that before. I have tolerated your failures enough already._

He watches blood spiral into the water. His hands are shaking, and it takes him minutes to switch off the fresher cycle. There are strands of armorweave and plasteel in his wounds that the water has not been able to abrade, and he knows he will have to dig these out soon. 

His discarded outfit lies in a pool of sticky, dark blood. He crawls past it, searching for a medpack, but the cupboards have all been emptied.

_You wish to be a new Vader. Vader lived in pain, and he made it his power. He conquered mortality and the weakness of his flesh._

No bacta dressings. No painkillers. His vision goes white at the edges, spots of colour dancing across it. 

‘I’m injured,’ he says. Broken ribs, maybe. Bruising blooms on his pale skin. Something crunches and brings bile to his throat whenever he twists his torso. 

_You are weak._  
He finally draws level with a mirror. The feral girl has slashed his face in two, and his features are caked with blood and dirt. There is grit in the wound. If Snoke will not give him a medpack and a droid soon, he will be marked like this forever. 

‘I did as you asked. I killed my father,’ he growls, arcing his chin to look at how the cut runs down his chest, across his collarbone. ‘I was not weak then.’

_You hesitated. The act has made you weak._

Anger boils within him, hot and bitter like the bile that surfaces in waves with his pain. ‘I am NOT WEAK!’

Ceramic tiles crack and shatter around him. Then his throat closes tight, and his hands go to his neck, flutter and scratch at raw skin as he begs for air, falls to his knees - 

_Report to me. I will mold you into something new._

Snoke, elsewhere on the ship, finally releases his grip. Kylo Ren kneels on the ground, head bowed in penitence, gasping and shivering. 

‘Yes,’ he replies. ‘Master.’ 

He kneels there awhile, hands resting on his knees, until the shivering subsides. Then he rises, and dresses in the filthy tunic and undergarments he recently discarded. The fabric is stiff with blood and grime. He calls on the force for support, for the will to move his fragile body and fix his surcoat back over his chest, holster his saber to his belt again and stand straight and tall and whole, even as his mind burns and roils like a supernova. 

_There is a medical droid waiting for you here. We will have your wounds seen to._  
Relief courses through him, soothing like balm - of course Snoke would not abandon him, not now. It will be too late to avoid a scar, but the pain will be diminished soon. He draws his resolve from that thought: the pain will be diminished soon.

And then his head snaps to the side, and he calls out: ‘Rey?’

*

Rey hit the floor, landing painfully on one elbow. Instinctively, she raised a hand, expecting something else to strike her - but there was only Ben, lying in his bacta suit, looking vulnerable and ridiculous all at the same time. His arm stretched out towards her; he had pushed her from where she'd been kneeling beside the cot.

'Rey,' he repeated. 'I-'

But then his face went dark, and he dragged the back of his hand across his eyes, the flexpoly suit crinkling and shifting. Tears tracked his face, wet and shining in the dim light. 

'Get out of my head,' he hissed. 'Get out.'

She planted her hands on the floor, steeling her resolve. 'I'm sorry, Ben. I was - I was trying to understand-'

'Don't try. Leave.'

She thought of going over to embrace him, to soothe her hand over his forehead like she'd done only minutes ago, but he sensed this and drew closer into himself - like a deep-space mine, bristling, waiting to explode.

'I've fought you before.' There was ice in his voice. 'If I wasn't in this plastic bag, I would fight you again.' 

Rey pulled herself up from the floor and left, a phantom, unfamiliar pain echoing on her side, a phantom heat burning across her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all of you who have left kudos & comments so far! Bit of a filler chapter, hope the changes in tense for flashbacks/dreams aren't too much of a pain. 
> 
> S/O to bylass: started from the (harry potter) bottom now we here.
> 
> Also S/O to the tinder date I met once who was like 'I've never met a girl who knows what a bacta tank is before.' I used the word bacta like 1,000 times in this chapter. For you.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘The dark side is a part of us,’ he said. ‘A tool. Not an inherent evil.’
> 
> She smiled tightly. ‘Not a tool. There is only the force.’ 
> 
> Like he had done so many times before, he reached his hand out to her, and she pressed her palm against his.

It had been a bitter, misty morning, not long after Rey had arrived on Lah’mu. She had been out in the field, trying to fix a broken moisture collector with numb fingers, cursing in every language she could think of as tears coursed down her frozen cheeks. 

_Rey,_ a voice had called, from all directions at once. 

She’d gone for her saber and the blaster at her hip simultaneously, expecting a bounty hunter, or perhaps just any one of the thousands in the galaxy who no doubt wanted her head. But the Togruta woman walking towards her through the mist had the faint, blue translucence Luke always had. Rey could see the faint outline of hills through her striped head-tails. 

_Are you a Jedi Master?_ Rey had asked. 

_I am not a Jedi,_ the woman smiled. _And neither are you, Rey._

She introduced herself as Ahsoka, once a Padawan of Anakin Skywalker. That part was important, she said, because if it wasn’t for that she might not have come. 

_You are what a Zabrak friend of mine once called takask wallask ti dan. One who is without a star._

Rey asked if Anakin Skywalker had sent her, and Ashoka smiled. 

_No. Anakin has passed on, elsewhere._

She then asked Rey if she had any Gatalentan tea, and if so, could she oblige her by brewing a pot, because there was much to talk about. 

In time, that was what she came to like most about Ahsoka. She couldn’t drink tea, not where she was, but she liked to hold the cup and breathe in the woody smell; even as a force projection, she still had a certain physicality, as if she walked with one foot either side of the threshold between life and the beyond.

Ahsoka hadn’t visited in two years, but she’d passed on all she knew about the place known as the Vergence Scatter, and helped Rey decipher some of Luke’s cryptic notes on it. Luke hadn’t appeared either, not for five or six years. 

Aside from local settlers on trade business or travellers seeking ship repairs, Ahsoka had been her only visitor in those first couple of long, cold years. Had talked her through the dark nights and the winter storms, the mornings where she felt as though she couldn’t even set foot out of her cot. 

_I came to help you find your star, okay?_ Ahsoka said on one of her first visits, one of the days when Rey had lain awake and swaddled in a blanket for hours, watching the weak sunlight move across the floor of her hut, lost in thought. _The Jedi didn't give a damn about either of us in the end, so it’s up to us to forge our own paths._

In time, Rey recognised Ahsoka as one of the voices who’d called out to her on Exegol, the last time she felt she could have called herself a Jedi. Everything after that had been a slow sink, as if the force was an ocean and the dark side was a weight tied to her foot. 

She hadn’t even wanted a part of the war. She’d wanted her family. She had that, briefly, in Han, and Leia, and Luke, and then Ben, but the Jedi and the Sith had taken that all from her, until there wasn’t a person in the entire shattered galaxy who knew a thing about who she was. 

Once Ahsoka had helped her work out how to find Ben, she realised she missed Leia the most. Leia, who had been everything to her; mother, commander, master.

After venturing into Ben’s mind without asking, she’d avoided her hut, instead gently persuading Finn to go in and check on Ben’s status and feed him bits of protein bread from her diminishing stock of ration packs. But Finn had his limits, and after a day, when they realised it was time for Ben to come out of the bacta suit, he put his foot down.

‘No, Rey,’ he almost laughed, shaking his head. ‘I helped you put him in the suit. I’m not going through that again.’ 

So, again, it was time to steel herself and see Ben, who was lying awake, his gaze firmly fixed on the ceiling above him.

‘I’ve come to get you out of that bacta suit,’ she said.

‘Thank the maker.’ His voice dripped with sarcasm. 

_You must be bored out of your skull,_ she thought.

He turned to look at her. ‘Well guessed.’ 

Rey stepped forwards to disconnect the suit, and he balked.

‘I can probably do this myself.’

‘No, you can’t. Those things are hard enough to get out of at the best of times. Your leg isn’t healed yet.’ 

His gaped at her. ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘It’s nothing I haven’t already seen. I put you in the suit.’ 

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘You were unconscious. Finn helped.’

‘He helped?’

‘He would help now too, but he had enough the first time.’ 

With some awkward manoeuvring, Rey managed to get the suit disconnected and drained, enough to unfasten it at the neck and work it over his shoulders. He was clearly embarrassed, but Rey had grown up by herself in an AT-AT in the desert, and wasn’t squeamish about nudity. 

‘I’ll need to wash,’ he glowered, his face and neck turning a shade of red that momentarily made his bruises disappear. ‘I’m covered in bacta.’

‘Fine,’ she wriggled the suit over his ankles and onto the ground. ‘I washed your clothes. Do you want help?’

‘Washing? No,’ his voice had gone strangely high. He’d hunched into himself, as if trying to fold in half, but she stole a glimpse anyway. He looked the same as he did in her memories; the broad shoulders, the slight patch of hair on his chest, the puckered bowcaster wound at his waist. 

_How ironic,_ she thought, as he half-crawled, half-limped to the fresher, leaving puddles of bacta slime on the floor. All these thoughts they’d had of each other, all this time they’d spent reaching for the other’s hand across the galaxy. This was the reality. 

She heard the fresher hum into life, and Ben yelp as the cold water hit him.

‘It takes a while to warm up,’ she called out.

Ben responded with what sounded like a Shriiyywook curse word, the first thing that had really made her laugh in days. 

_We have time, now,_ she thought. _We have all the time we should have had before._

His voice arrived in her head as if he was sitting beside her, and not shivering outside in her home-built fresher. _You really think that?_

*

Rey had, indeed, washed his clothes. The ones he’d worn to Exegol, really just a standard-issue First Order base layer. The top still had a fraying hole from where she’d stabbed him on Kef Bir.

‘I’d like some new clothes,’ he told her.

‘This isn’t Coruscant,’ she scoffed. ‘I need to travel to the next settlement and trade for some fabric. And then make new clothes. Finn’s wouldn’t fit you. He’s smaller than you.’ 

‘I’d rather not be reminded of what happened in these clothes.’ 

‘I would. They suit you better than your jacket.’ 

He rubbed a scrap of cloth through his wet hair, trying to dry it off. Lah’mu was too cold to be sitting about damp. Rey had offered him a scratchy blanket of some unfamiliar, musky wool, but it was more irritant than warmth.

Out of the bacta, his leg and ribs throbbed and ached, but it was old pain, pain he knew was close to leaving his body. Out of the fresher, Rey had pressed her hand to his chest and delivered another small jolt of healing energy; just enough to soothe the catch in his lungs with each breath. 

‘You should go into medicine,’ he told her. ‘Instead of…whatever you do here.’

She frowned. ‘It takes too much out of me. I’ve only been giving you small doses.’ 

Rey sat on the floor in front of him, her legs crossed. It couldn’t have been later than noon, but the light outside was murky, and she’d had to switch on an old lamp that occasionally guttered like a flame. 

'I'm sorry about yesterday,' she said, softly. 

‘Why did you come here?’ he asked, wanting to push past the memory she'd brought back. ‘It’s been so long. Why?’

She sighed. ‘I have so much to tell you.’

‘You said it yourself. We have time now.’ 

The light fizzled with a hum of static. Flickered in her eyes as they darted back up to meet his. 

‘The dark side has never stopped calling to me. They let me go off with Finn and Poe and Chewie to hunt down ex-First Order. Sith acolytes. And the dark side…I opened myself to it. Because it helped. Because it wouldn’t let go of me.’

She brought her knees up under her chin. 

‘And then we went to Mustafar. And something happened there. It was easier to come here and be alone than carry on. For the sake of the others. Finn didn’t speak to me for almost a year.’

‘Because you exiled yourself?’ he asked, thinking of Luke and his island.

‘No. Because he was scared of me. Luke failed. I fell.’

She stretched her hands out in front of her, contemplating.

‘You pushed me in the desert on Pasaana and I thought I’d killed Chewie. I did kill your troopers.’ 

He searched forwards with the force, experimentally feeling for her thoughts, but she sensed him and dismissed the memory. He was left with the faintest flicker of it - the scent of ozone, and of ash -

‘The dark side is a part of us,’ he said. ‘A tool. Not an inherent evil.’

She smiled tightly. ‘Not a tool. There is only the force.’ 

Like he had done so many times before, he reached his hand out to her, and she pressed her palm against his. 

Her next words came in a rush, thick with tears. ‘I couldn’t go back. I barely escaped a trial.’

He ran a fingertip along the inside of her wrist; a consoling gesture to make up for what he couldn’t say. ‘Mustafar. Can you show me?’

She shook her head. ‘Not yet.’ 

‘You forget the things I have done.’ 

‘Yes. But you think better of me.’ She lifted her other hand, threading her fingers into the gaps between his. ‘Healing is a power of the dark side, you know. Messing with the balance of things. Using the force as an instrument.’

‘A second chance, though. That is something the light loves.’ 

She bent her head and pressed her lips to his palm.

‘I deserve my exile,’ she said. ‘And I deserve you. Nothing else.’ 

Even when her eyes brimmed with tears there was still a fire there, one that had burned since he’d first seen her in the forest on Takodana. A defiance that was inherently Rey’s, one that a childhood of starvation and scavenging had lit inside her. 

‘I deserve you,’ she repeated.

‘And you have me,’ he replied. 

'Can I sit beside you?'

He made a noise of agreement, but she had already stood and parked herself on the cot. She slipped an arm through his.

'I'm done with the Jedi,' she said. 'Like I said. I gave all of myself to the Resistance, to the war, the Jedi. And everything was taken away from me. I decided to take something back.'

Through the force - as if it ran like a thread between the crook of her arm and his - he felt the echoes of her loss. Grief that had settled and been worn like a blanket. _I lost them as well,_ he thought, but withheld that from her because that, like Pasaana, had been his fault too. 

'Your parents,' he said, mentally pinpointing the nexus of her pain. 

'I still don't know who they were,' she said. She accepted this now, as fact. There was no longing in her tone. 'I've reasoned that my father was the result of a cloning experiment. I visited a moon called Sojourn, a few years ago. It was where the Emperor studied with his master. Where they experimented with the dark side. Taking life away and trying to give it back...'

If she had more to say on her parents, she kept both her mouth and her mind closed. Her hand rested on his thigh; a small and comforting weight.

'I couldn't carry on anyway, even if Mustafar hadn't happened. I was too tired. It felt like time to live. No more running around the galaxy with a saber.’ She cracked a small, mirthless smile. ‘My back hurts. All the time. And I get headaches so often.’

He was tempted to ask about Mustafar again, but the warmth of her hand on his thigh was too much of a distraction. Like when he had taken her to Snoke, alone in that private elevator, and the urge to kiss her had nearly broken him. 

‘But we should talk about something else,’ she said, drawing her legs up onto the cot and shifting backwards, so she could lie down with her back pressed to the wall. She patted the pillow beside her head. ‘What’s your favourite planet, Ben? There’s so much I never got time to find out about you.’

His head rested on the pillow beside hers. ‘I don’t think I have one.’ 

‘It was a stupid question,’ she said. ‘I liked Takodana. It was the first place I ever saw green. All that grass and forest and all those singing birds…’

‘That was where I met you,’ he replied, but her smile went tight. A bad memory, of course.

‘I’ve never spent enough time on any particular planet to have an affinity for just one,’ he answered, eventually. 

‘Favourite ship you’ve flown?’

‘A TIE Silencer.’ 

Rey went quiet for a few minutes. 

‘Me too,’ she finally agreed. ‘Favourite Jedi Master?’

‘Is that something you have?’ he said. ‘I don’t know any besides Luke.’

‘I studied them,’ she shrugged. ‘Favourite colour?’

‘Now you’re being silly,’ he said, and she grinned. 

She drew closer to him - of course, the cot had only been made for one - pressing against his side. Her head nestled under his arm in a position that must have been uncomfortable, because she soon shifted to rest her head on his chest, directly over his heart. 

‘You sound better,’ she said.

If she noticed that his heart had began to race, she chose not to point that out. Then her fingertips skated over the hole in his jumper, the freshly-healed skin below. There was a pull somewhere in his navel, the feeling of heat rising in his face. Her fingers curled around the singed edges of the hole, and then she was inclining her face to his, drawing closer, until he felt warm breath against his ear. A kiss on his jawline, his mouth -

Rey could never be second-guessed, he knew that well by now - but for the first time she was second-guessing him, pausing with every few centimetres of fabric she managed to push aside from his chest, as if reading how he responded each time her cold hand brushed against his skin. Then she was sitting up and tugging the shirt away from him, and her fingers fluttered over that patch of skin again - he flinched, and she paused, holding the shirt bunched around his neck - 

‘Please,’ he murmured, grabbing her by the wrist, manoeuvring the shirt over his head himself. ‘Please-’

Her mouth was hungry against his again, but soft and warm this time - no grit and blood as there had been on Exegol - and now and again, she would bite gently on his lip, pulling towards her - 

Then she drew back and took his hand, directed it beneath the hem of her tunic to rest against her taut stomach.

‘I’ve never done this before,’ she said. Loose strands of hair were now stuck to her forehead, against her flushed face.

‘Me neither,’ he said, and worked his fingers under the edges of her chest binding. A gasp escaped her lips, like the ones he had heard her make in their force bonds, when she’d been taken by surprise -

She made short work of his belt, the fastenings of his trousers. The pain was back in his chest, where his ribs shifted with the rhythm of their shallow breaths, but he pushed it aside, pushed away the ache of his leg when he rocked his hips against hers, brought her against him with a nudge of his knee to kiss her breasts, when she slipped her hand beneath his waistband and he bit down on her soft skin - 

_Please,_ he thought. 

The pain was nothing now. There was only Rey.

It was awkward, at first, with her bony hips grinding against his and the narrowness of the cot, her mouth close to his ear and moaning too loud in pain or pleasure - but soon her hand gripped his wrist and pushed him down so she could rock back and forth and find a rhythm he could follow, one that sent soft yelps from her mouth into his with each kiss, one that made him dizzy with the sensation of her warmth. Careering on the edge of free-fall. This was what the force had visited on him in dreams since they had destroyed Snoke’s guard, when he had offered her his hand and thought that, if she took it, perhaps this would have been the outcome, this sweaty tangle of bodies on the floor of the throne room - this new feeling of heat, like the enveloping warmth of a sun, that resonated back-and-forth in their bond in waves, until their simultaneous release -

Then it was over, all too soon, and she lay over him, sweat-slick skin sticking to his, her knee buried somewhere between his thighs. Cold air rushed over them, and he grabbed for the blanket.

Her hand rested against his cheek. ‘Ben,’ she whispered.

He could not think; his thoughts raced by, like the streaks of stars on a cockpit window during a hyperspace jump. His healing leg throbbed a complaint. 

‘I dreamt of this,’ he murmured.

She turned, muffled a laugh in his neck. ‘You did?’

‘I dreamt of you often.’

Rey drew the blanket over their entwined bodies. Her breath still came in short, shallow gasps, and he could feel her heartbeat thrumming against his ribcage where their chests pressed together.

‘I dream of you too,’ she said.

Her lips pressed against his ear and he closed his eyes, listening as her breathing slowed and became steady again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff! It gets a bit darker. And smuttier. 
> 
> 'takask wallask ti dan' is taken from _Aftermath_ by Chuck Wendig, which was the first Star Wars book I read. I folded the corner of that page over thinking 'heck, that's nice'.
> 
> Thanks for reading :~)


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘You have to stay here,’ she said, throwing the blanket back over Ben as she began to dress. 
> 
> ‘I had no plans to leave,’ he replied. 
> 
> How she’d missed that sarcasm. That dryness his voice had, from time to time. He was watching her with guarded eyes, reclining back on the cot, one hand draped over the patch of yellowing bruises on his ribcage. Her hand went to his forehead, briefly, pressing against the warmth of his skin. _Alive._ This is what she had gone back to Exegol for, and Poe would understand one day.

She woke to the sound of engines and a knocking at the door.

‘Rey?’ Finn called out. ‘Poe’s here.’

Her stomach lurched, but she projected calm through the force. Finn’s hand was on the doorhandle, she could sense, and she caught a brief glimpse of a possible future where he entered and yelled in disgust-

‘Give me a few minutes,’ she answered. 

‘He won’t wait,’ Finn was saying, already walking away down the path. ‘He’s still mad at you.’

She threw the blanket aside, swivelling her legs onto the cold stone floor. Ben sat up behind her, grimacing in pain. They could only have been asleep for half an hour. In their haste, she was still half-dressed, trousers still wrapped around one ankle, her arm bindings still fixed in place even as the cold air rushed across her exposed thighs and chest. 

‘You have to stay here,’ she said, throwing the blanket back over Ben as she began to dress. 

‘I had no plans to leave,’ he replied. 

How she’d missed that sarcasm. That dryness his voice had, from time to time. He was watching her with guarded eyes, reclining back on the cot, one hand draped over the patch of yellowing bruises on his ribcage. Her hand went to his forehead, briefly, pressing against the warmth of his skin. _Alive._ This is what she had gone back to Exegol for, and Poe would understand one day.

Just not today.

Poe had landed his Corellian transport close by and was leaning against the bulkhead, brow knitted in a frown. If he had seen Rey leave the hut, he made no effort to acknowledge her. She reached out into the force, trying to sense the layout of his thoughts-

‘Don’t,’ Finn said softly, emerging from the tent with his pack. ‘Don’t use the force on him. He has every right to be angry.’

Her face was hot. Suddenly she was aware of how dishevelled she felt: hair spilled out of its bun, a cooling tackiness between her thighs, her bare breasts brushing against her rough homespun tunic because, of course, there had been no time to re-wrap her bindings. The feeling of being raw, being open. A fire burned deep in her stomach. 

Finn stopped for a moment, evidently deciding whether to embrace her or not - and then stooped in for a one-armed hug

‘Don’t be a stranger,’ he muttered. ‘Please come see us on Chandrila soon. With Ben or not.’

Then he held her at arms length and said, loud enough for Poe to hear: ‘I’ll keep training. I’ll be lifting enormous rocks before you know it.’

Her lips twitched in a smile as he turned to leave.

‘Colossal rocks!’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Entire mountains!’

Poe finally fixed her with a sour gaze. ‘Did it work?’ he shouted. ‘Your plan?’

‘Yes,’ she shouted back. ‘Don’t you want to come in for a drink?’

Poe’s eyes flickered to the hut behind her. ‘You know what? I’m good.’

‘Is BB-8 with you?’

‘No, he had to stay behind.’ 

Without another word, he stalked up the ship’s gangway, Finn in tow. She could see him storm into the cockpit and take the pilot’s seat, glowering straight ahead, not even turning to look when Finn ruffled his hair.

_Goodbye,_ she sent to Finn through the force. He waved as the ship took off, until it became a blip in the sky and she could see him no longer. 

Ben had got dressed by the time she re-entered the hut, and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor. There was that pull in the pit of her stomach again, the ache between her thighs. 

‘It’s quiet in here,’ he said.

‘There’s only a few hundred settlers on the whole planet,’ she said, and then caught herself, realising that the _here_ he referred to stretched no further than the confines of his own head. 

‘It is,’ she agreed, finally. 

His gaze shifted to her. ‘Well? Did Finn go?’

‘Yes,’ she was already crossing the room to sit by his side, twine her arms around his hunched form. No time for small talk. Not when she’d spent so much of her life waiting. She wanted to push him back down and wrap herself around him, let him divide her body where it still felt warm and split. 

But he sat stiff and unmoving, no longer pliant beneath her hands. She smoothed her hands over his hair. 

‘It’s just us now,’ she said. 

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘They don’t approve of what you did, either of them. Finn, or the other one. Dameron.’ 

‘Finn might not approve, but he understands,’ she said. ‘But neither of them know what it’s like to have Palpatine in your head.’

‘Neither do you,’ he said, brow furrowed. But before she could answer back, he changed the subject. ‘What do you do here? Every day. Why this place?’

She let her hands fall back to her sides. ‘I have a moisture farm. The water here needs processing before you can drink it. I trade that in the nearest settlement. Sometimes I do repairs in the spaceport. I train. And I like going for walks.’ 

‘Walks. Really.’ His deep voice was impassive. ‘And you’re content with this?’

She bit back a retort. ’I’m content with peace.’ 

He dipped his head towards her kitchen. ‘You’re content with protein bread and synthstew?’

‘It’s comforting. Food from childhood.’

His furrowed brow loosened momentarily. She could see he was thinking of several exotic Chandrilan takeaways that constituted his childhood comfort food.

‘You could do better than this, Rey. I’m sure they’d welcome you somewhere like Chandrila. You could be wearing shimmersilk and eating expensive food. Hell, you could be eating fresh food. Not farming and rambling like a hermit here. Aren’t you a Resistance hero?’ 

‘I told you why I can’t do that,’ she could not longer suppress the irritation in her voice. Her face was hot, her heartbeat strumming in her temple and the tips of her fingers. The ache in the pit of her stomach persisted.

‘There’s really been no one else? In nine years?’

‘Nobody.’

‘Did you even try to find somebody?’ he scoffed. 

‘I had other problems.’

‘I didn’t give you my life so you could live like this. So you could waste it. Living nowhere. Loving nobody. And eating synthesised packets of nothing.’ 

‘I’m not wasting it. I’m living on my own terms.’ 

‘You’re living with your own loneliness. This is no better than Jakku.’

Rey decided she’d had enough and shoved herself away from him, rising to her feet. There had been shades of Kylo in what he’d said. Or perhaps just Ben; antisocial, introspective, moody Ben, the boy Leia told her he’d been long before he turned to the dark side. 

She left and closed the door of the hut behind her, leaving him to wallow in his own thoughts. She would go for a walk, she decided, and let the fresh air clear out her head and numb the burning in the pit of her stomach.

It had been Ben talking, she decided. And in a way, he’d been right. 

*

The weather was nice enough, albeit cold, and so Rey decided to walk a few clicks north, towards the pale hills she could see from the back window of her hut. 

When she’d first arrived, the sheer dampness of Lah’mu had almost defeated her. Everything about the planet was wet in some way; the frequent mists and haars that rolled in from the southern sea that made her hair flyaway, the bogs and hidden pools that had claimed so many of her shoes. Calm, burbling streams with crystal-clear water that could not be drunk straight from the source, but needed extensive processing and filtration so as not to upset delicate humanoid stomachs. 

It was a challenge, and ultimately that suited her. Just as she’d learned to adapt to the dry, brittle heat of Jakku as a child, she had adapted to Lah’mu. It had been a useful distraction. On those long nights she’d spent shivering in her narrow bed, fingers and toes nipped by frost and her supplies of drinking water running low, it had been difficult to focus on anything higher-minded than her will to survive. 

And eventually, Ahsoka had appeared, and helped her chart her path back to Ben. In time, she’d been able to reach out to Finn again. And after that, she felt she could resume his training, abandoned almost three years before. 

There was a spot in the hills she liked to visit, where she’d meditated sometimes in her study of what Luke had called the Vergence Scatter - or, as Ahsoka called it, the World Between Worlds, the place that was neither here nor there. There had never been any Jedi on Lah’mu. It was sleepy and mostly unbothered by colonisation. And so the force sang in the hills, in the rock, in the water, in the green that grew everywhere and delighted her every day. Although the first year had been hard, she’d never felt so close to the everyday harmony of the force. 

She reached her meditation spot around mid-afternoon, when the sun was just beginning to sink down to the horizon, a pale yellow smudge behind the murky clouds. She sat cross-legged in the long grass, letting the dew soak into her tunic and chill her skin. 

Her thoughts were back in her hut, in her bed, with Ben. The way she had touched him and let him touch her, after so many years spent waiting and wanting. The way he had been so careful, so gentle when the moment came, quite unlike the way he’d been in any of her dreams before. His smile, lopsided, showing slightly crooked teeth; she’d only really seen that smile once or twice now, but it was already overwriting other memories of his face. 

She touched a hand to her lips, thinking of the way he’d kissed her. Tentatively, then hungrily. It had been the first time for both of them, she thought. Which surprised her, a little, thinking of all the power he’d commanded in the First Order or as Luke Skywalker’s Padawan and what that must have meant to so many other women and men who weren’t her - but then again, nobody had really liked Ben at the Jedi temple, by what Leia and Luke had both told her. And Kylo Ren had been a monster in a mask. 

Women and men had been scared of her too, she reminded herself. After the war ended and she came back from Exegol, unable to fully explain what had happened there or why the Emperor was no longer a threat. What had happened to Kylo Ren. Why she couldn’t really talk about anything, much, and why she felt she had to disappear to Tatooine, right at the crucial moment that new treaties and declarations were being signed on Coruscant. Then, when she decided not to establish a new temple, to train new Jedi - because this was what they decided she needed to do, now that she was no longer useful as a weapon. When the footage of her and the lightning she could cast spread over the Holonet, after a botched mission on Jedha. And then Mustafar.

All those years she’d spent putting distance between herself and everyone who surrounded her - hoping, somewhere in the back of her mind, that one day Ben would appear as a force ghost and explain everything. That he would help her untangle the visions the force had presented her of Rey and Ben, or Rey and Kylo. The different paths she had seen them both take. 

She settled into the grass, eyes closed, stretching her face towards the weak sun. Her breathing began to slow.

She thought of Ben.

*

The throne is cold and unwelcoming when she takes it. It was made for an old man already half-dead, or a cyborg in armour: not Rey, wrapped in a once-white homespun tunic that is filthy and dark with spilled blood.

But it is her throne. And she will make it welcome her.

He is late to arrive, because she beat him there; she outsmarted his plans, and the First Order, and the Resistance. She didn’t choose to get into the war; she had no skin in the game, not once Leia was gone. She does not owe anything to the Jedi or the Sith.

This will be a new order, and there is a place for him in it if he’ll let her shape him into something new. 

He glowers at her. He’s always glowering. She’ll change that, she thinks. She has wanted him in so many ways since the first time their hands touched on Ahch-To, when Ben finally became something real and organic in her mind, instead of something that had already been buried deep underground by Kylo, by Snoke, by the Emperor. She pats the broad arm of the throne beside her. 

‘There’s room for you,’ she says. ‘If you do as I say.’

‘We’ll see,’ he hisses, but he still walks up to her and takes his seat, perched at her side. He has wanted this throne since he was twenty-three. Snoke told him to want it. 

_Poor boy,_ she thinks, as her hand caresses his thigh and he bites his lip with anger. _How much in that head is your own?_

‘I can take what I want,’ he tells her. But she knows he has lost faith in his ability to take, to conquer, to have. ‘You know that.’

‘So? Then take it.’ 

It’s a gamble, when his saber is holstered on his belt and she knows he is physically capable of dicing her into thousands of small pieces. Mentally, though, she is sure he would never hurt her. Otherwise, she would have died on Starkiller Base in an interrogation chamber long ago. 

‘Take it,’ she says, as her hand runs up the inside of his thigh and he buckles, eyes shut tight, lips white and pressed into a line. She lets her hand continue over the waistband of his trousers, under the hem of his tunic. Lets her index finger brush the soft skin of his navel. 

‘What do you want, Kylo?’ she asks him. 

‘You don’t call me that,’ he says, and his hands are white-knuckled where they grab at her wrist and the back of the chair. 

‘Ben, then? Who are you now?’

He shivers as she works apart the fastening of his trousers and runs a finger through tightly coiled hair. 

‘I’m more powerful than you.’

‘Are you?’ she asks, and he closes his eyes and bites his lip again. ‘Who is in your head now?’

To her surprise, he has some sense of humour left. ‘Mostly - you.’ 

There is someone else whispering to his thoughts still, she knows - a dead man, or a man who should have died a long time ago. 

She takes him in her hand, and forgets herself momentarily in the revelation of hard and soft, the way he twitches at her touch. For all her bluster, this is still new, still an unknown.

‘If you intend to kill me,’ he growls. ‘Now would be a good time.’

‘I’m not going to kill you. I’m only taking what I want.’ 

His head falls back against the throne, mouth agape, eyes distant. This is new to him too, she realises. His shuddering breath falls into rhythm with the stroke of her hand. What would the men who haunt him make of this? Those men who claimed him as their instrument long before he was even born. Nobody has ever touched Ben like this, or looked at him like she has. What do they whisper to him now?

There is heat in her belly and a new rawness at the point where her thighs touch. She tugs him towards her, into the throne at her side, where he writhes and moans a complaint into her ear. She cups a hand against his face, and he presses into it, so she can feel the scrape of stubble against her palm.

Nobody has ever touched Ben at all, she thinks, and imagines how easy it might have been to dismantle the First Order before, if she’d known this was all it took. 

He slips off his gloves, just as he did to touch her hand that night on Ahch-To, and rests a palm against her cheek. His thumb brushes the corner of her mouth, and she parts her lips, tilts her head to let it slide onto her tongue. His face flushes red. He’s using all of his willpower to pretend he isn’t turned on by her. 

_Well, it isn’t working,_ she thinks. 

Her first act on her new throne will be to defile it. She unfastens her belt, setting the sacred Skywalker lightsaber to one side. Removes her white tunic, then lets him scrabble at the fabric that binds her chest so he can grasp at her breasts, although he’s hesitant and his hands shake, as if he’s frightened of her for the first time. He almost slips off the throne when she takes him in her hand and begins to stroke again, but then he finds his resolve and moves to the floor, kneeling between her legs as he peels off her filthy trousers. 

A cold finger slides into her, and she thinks for a moment he’s about to return the favour, but he’s only checking to see how wet she is for him, checking the angle at which their bodies should adjoin. Thank the stars the throne was made for someone bigger than them, she thinks, detachedly. He’s so much taller than her, this wouldn’t work anywhere else. 

He keeps looking at her, eyes wide in his flushed face, his scar an angry red - he looks lost, confused.

‘I want you inside me,’ she breathes.

‘This is what you want?’ he says.

She nods. _Don’t stop now,_ she thinks. 

When he pushes into her it hurts, at first, like she’s been told it’s supposed to. As though she is being stretched from within. He registers her pain and stops, half-inside in her, a bead of sweat trickling down his brow.

She pushes back, letting him fill her, even though it aches in a way that makes her toes curl and her teeth grit. 

‘I’m hurting you,’ he says.

_Where’s your fire?_ she thinks. He’s spent all this time chasing her across the galaxy, haunting her every step with a crackling saber and and army that would gladly shoot her body full of blaster wounds. She always thought Kylo would take her by force. That he would enjoy hurting her. 

‘I don’t care,’ she hisses, between clenched teeth. 

So he begins to move again. With every wave of pain there’s a small crest of pleasure, until the balance is tipped and the pain diminishes and all she can focus on is the way her heart is beating a new tempo where they meet. 

He’s gentle. He goes slowly, uncertainly, and he strokes a thumb against her cheek and brushes hair away from her face. His face is wide and open with awe, slick with sweat and every vein on his temple outlined and pulsing. 

‘Harder,’ she whispers. She did not expect this carefulness, not from Kylo, not from Ben.

His brow knits, and he gasps for breath. ‘I can’t last.’

‘Please.’

It hurts again, when he guns into her and her head is pushed back against the throne, banging against it in a way that will only register as painful later. It hurts when she grasps him by the neck and brings their mouths clashing together, when he grabs her breast and when she bites down hard on his lip, when she feels his full weight thrust against her and then, shaking, he cries out into her mouth and collapses - 

He withdraws without asking. Something warm and wet runs down the inside of her thigh, onto the throne. He looks up at her, panting as if he has just been in a fight, still in his high-necked surcoat. The throbbing in her clit begins to dissipate and fade. Far from release. 

His hand squeezes her thigh. He crawls towards her, rests his head on her stomach, sweeps trembling fingers over the inside of her arm. He is scared, now, that the reality of what they’ve done is settling upon him. Now that he is able to listen to the voices in his head once more. 

‘What do we do now?’ he whispers. ‘What do we do?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well, weren't we all thinking "throne sex" when Rey said she had a vision of them on the throne together?? this is just my interpretation of said vision ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody had ever touched him like she had. The time she’d appeared in his cabin on the Supremacy, soaked with rain, crying, bringing the acrid smell of a fire with her, it had been a revelation. That someone like her could look at him and not be afraid. That she’d wanted to extend her hand to him and touch her fingertips to his. That she was real, and not just a ghost the force had conjured to taunt him. Not just one of Snoke's tests.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that there's a couple of small trigger warnings for this chapter.
> 
> There's a very brief moment of self-harm near the beginning: if you want to avoid it, the passage starts with 'He planted his foot on the floor...' and ends with 'The voice was low, sonorous...'
> 
> Although the dream encounter between Ben and Rey at the end of the chapter is consensual, the context makes it a bit murky; the whole encounter starts with an *, although the specific section begins with 'Kylo has been trained...' and ends with ' _We don't have time_ , he thinks', if you want to avoid that.

From where he sat on the edge of the cot in Rey’s hut, Ben could see distant hills, pale and green in the weak sunlight. Rey was there, he could tell. In the force, she had the energy of a brilliant star, like the pilot-stars his father had taught him to look for on navigational maps when he was younger, and they’d flown the Falcon on short-haul trips without any computer systems. He could almost imagine Lah’mu spinning on Rey’s axis. Her energy dictating north and south, sunrise and sunset. 

He planted his foot on the floor, experimentally resting all of his weight on his healing leg. Pain shot from his knee, through his thigh; for a moment he felt nauseous and weak. But Snoke had trained him to walk through pain worse than this. He thumped his fist against the side of his knee, triggering the shooting pain again, and stood, gritting his teeth. His ribs still ached, but it was easy to parcel that feeling away and forget about it. 

_Walk. Don’t be weak. This is nothing._

The voice was low, sonorous, but he knew that both Snoke and the Emperor had long vacated his mind. They were only echoes now. 

It was cold outside Rey’s hut, and the sun was already beginning to set. He considered walking to her, but knew that would be futile, when every step made his stomach lurch and his breath sharp. Instead, he set himself the goal of reaching the closest moisture processor, and slumped down in the dewy grass before it, letting his clothes grow damp and cool his aching leg. 

_I died in these clothes,_ he thought idly. His finger caught the edge of the singed hole that had once marked a fatal lightsaber wound. There was no scar, nothing to indicate that first encounter with death. Likewise, there was no longer a scar on his face, although he wasn’t sure when that had disappeared; he had taken stock and every other mark was still there, from the ugly pucker of a bowcaster wound in his waist, to countless tiny pockmarks of shrapnel-wounds on his forearms. 

Nobody had ever touched him like she had. The time she’d appeared in his cabin on the Supremacy, soaked with rain, crying, bringing the acrid smell of a fire with her, it had been a revelation. That someone like her could look at him and not be afraid. That she’d wanted to extend her hand to him and touch her fingertips to his. That she was real, and not just a ghost the force had conjured to taunt him. Not just one of Snoke's tests.

He’d always tried to compartmentalise his thoughts about her, to keep them away from Snoke, although his master had still somehow found a way in. The force had visited dreams of her on him almost nightly, in every way possible; visions of her taking his hand, visions of what could have been if she had followed his path, visions of them wrapped around each other and him inside her. Visions of him destroying her, too, which he was certain Snoke and the Emperor had planted in his head, although at first every image of Rey blurred into one. 

Her life now was not what he had envisioned. She had exiled herself from the galaxy, on a backwater planet so small he barely recognised the name of the system it was in, in a hut smaller than a petty officer’s cabin with only tools and ration packets for company. Although, he supposed, his situation wasn’t much better; in the nine years he’d been gone, no doubt everything he owned had been destroyed.

Soon, the sun was low in the sky, and the insects and birds that had been quietly chittering about him fell silent, and the distant hills faded into descending mist.

Ben closed his eyes, isolating his mind from the pain in his wounds, his frozen fingertips and numb skin. Rey was out there, in the dusk, burning as brightly as she always did.

*

‘Please,’ he says, his hand outstretched. The tracks of tears on her face dance with reflected fire-light. Her breath comes shuddering and fast, and in their bond he can faintly hear her heart thrumming like a captured animal’s.

She stretches her hand out too. Hesitates, looking back to the oculus and the battle outside. The _Supremacy_ is going down. The Resistance is all but gone. They can both feel the losses on both sides through the force, he knows; it is nauseating and powerful and difficult to push aside. 

‘It’s just us now,’ she sobs.

He almost jumps at the moment when their hands touch, not quite believing for a second that she stands there with her small, sweaty, calloused hand in his. Still not quite believing that Snoke is dead, and that he can think of her now without shame or concealment, think of her the way he’s wanted to think of her since they first met.

‘It’s just us,’ he says.

Her hand squeezes his. A reassuring gesture, or perhaps simply a way to stop it trembling. 

He has wanted this for so long, both as Kylo and the secret, deep parts where he is still Ben. Wanted her. The feral scavenger girl and the relentless fire that burns inside her. Her eyes meet his, and her lips are parted, a smear of blood at the corner of her mouth. She keeps her thoughts hidden, as she has now learned to do. 

He pulls her towards him. Crashes his mouth against hers with all the yearning he has kept buried, the yearning his dead master still managed to use against him. She is stiff at first, and her tears are wet against his cheek. But then her mouth softens and she is kissing him back.

He pulls away. ‘We don’t have much time. The ship is going down.’

Her eyes are glazed, distant. ‘It’s all gone now.’

She helps him unbuckle the belt at her waist and unravel her tunic. She is gentle when she unfastens his surcoat and slides it off his shoulders. She is gentle when she kisses him; short, quick little touches of her lips to his. 

Kylo has been trained to be anything but gentle, and Ben is too distant, too unpracticed to know how to be present in this moment. He bruises her neck with his mouth, tears the binding cloth around her chest, pinches at her breasts, and tugs off his gloves with his teeth, hungry for the end goal, the vision he can already perceive of their tangled limbs and sweat - 

Rey is crying. It distracts him.

‘Ben,’ she says. 

Nobody else has called him that name in so long. Snoke forbade it. 

‘Please,’ he says.

She nods and presses her mouth to his cheek, slides her arms around his neck, her fingers through his hair.

He knows she caught the implicit question he asked of her. _You’re nothing. But not to me. Am I something to you?_

This is her answer, perhaps. 

They fall to the floor together, her leg wrapped around him and his hands on her shoulders. The room still burns around them and there are bodies here and there, but they have both grown up witnessing death and decay as part of the everyday fabric of life. The dark side calls. It is an inescapable part of them both, feeding the bond that draws them together and makes every touch on her skin resonate in his own. It’s fitting that this is the closest they’ve ever been; here, in Snoke’s throne room, freshly doused with the blood and sweat of conquest. 

He realises his hands are shaking as he tugs her trousers off. She is quiet, watching, her hand curled around the back of his neck.

‘Please want this,’ he finds himself pleading, as they fumble to find the right angle. ‘Please want this, Rey.’

‘I want this,’ she whispers. ‘I didn’t think it would be now.’

_We don’t have time,_ he thinks. _We will never have this time again._

He pushes into her and she hisses in pain.

‘Slow,’ she says. 

He almost pleads with her again, because she’s so tight and warm around him and it takes any energy and willpower he has left not to lose control. But she rocks her hips from side to side, her teeth grit and eyes narrowed, easing their bodies together, until they fit. 

Snoke had talked about how he had to conquer her, like he had to conquer all the tangible and intangible things that stood between him and mastery of the dark side. This is conquering, he thinks. He thinks that he has won, even as she starts to move against him and establish a rhythm, as she pulls and presses his hips against her own. Their bond is stronger than ever, and he can sense the way she feels split and hot and sore at the point where their bodies meet. 

When he comes, it’s sudden and loud and graceless, and he can tell she is nowhere near where he is, her brow furrowed with concern and sweat gathering on her temples and the skin above her lip. He thinks he should apologise. Or kiss her, because she looks lovely as ever, even bloodied and bruised. Mostly, he wants to cry, because they both have everything they wanted, but it isn’t right, something just doesn't feel right -

Rey pushes him away and grabs for her clothes. Her legs shake against his. 

‘We need to go,’ she says bluntly. 

The _Supremacy_ will go down in a matter of minutes; the floor is shuddering beneath them, and the angle of the sky he can see through the oculus has changed. He scrambles for his own clothes and dresses, awkward and undignified, watching her re-tie her messy hair and re-fasten her belt -

‘Ben. We need a ship. Quickly.’

She’s crying again. He grabs her by the wrist and pulls her towards the concealed side exit that leads to Snoke’s private hangar, where, mercifully, a sleek yacht is still docked. He wrenches the door open and she claws past him to take the pilot’s seat and power on the engines.

He braces himself as the ship rocks backwards. Clamps a hand against the back of her chair. She guns the sublight engines, begins to feverishly search the navcomputer for a Hyperspace route. 

And then the voice arrives; an unfamiliar whisper in the back of his mind.

_My boy. I knew you would not fail me._

His mind goes blank. Rey pushes him into the co-pilot’s chair, screams something about a seatbelt and the shields. This is not Snoke. Snoke is dead. He was sure of that.

_I am not Snoke. I am far more than Snoke ever could be._

The ship clears the Supremacy’s hangar and soars into deep space.

‘Leia,’ Rey says. ‘I can’t sense her any more. I can’t sense anyone. They’re all gone.’ 

He turns to look at her. There is a fresh pair of wounds on her shoulder, both still trickling blood. Abstractly, he thinks they look like two hands reaching for each other. His hands tremble as he reaches for the controls, keys in a command to divert more power to their shields. 

_You will both serve me, in time._

‘I love you,’ he tells her. He know there isn’t any time for them, now. That this was all they were supposed to have. 

‘I know,’ she says, looking out of the cockpit, where the sky is thick with debris and dust from Star Destroyers and Resistance craft alike. Her hand rests on the yoke. 

‘Where do we go?’ she turns to look him in the eye. ‘What do we do, Ben?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is kind of just a re-hash of the last chapter from Ben's perspective instead, with them both recalling visions of how their relationship would have worked out if they'd taken each other's hands before facing down the Emperor. It just amplifies what they're really afraid of, I think; Rey is afraid of her own power/her draw to the dark side, and Ben just...well, I guess he just wants to be loved. Just wanted to get that out in the medium of SMUT. 
> 
> I just love angst, tbh. Future smut will be less depressing!!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	7. Chapter Seven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey wrapped her hands around the bowl, nursing her cold fingers against its warmth. ‘No. I brought you back because I missed you.’
> 
> His eyes met hers. _Because I wanted you,_ she thought, knowing he was listening.
> 
> ‘The Jedi were always very strict about emotional attachment,’ his stare did not waver. 'No emotion, no possession.'
> 
> ‘I told you I’m not a Jedi. I live by my own code, not theirs.’

When Rey arrived back at her hut just after the sun had set, she found Ben in her garden, slumped against a moisture processor, shivering in the cold.

‘On the stars, Ben,’ she said, hooking an arm through his to raise him, shakily, to his feet. ‘You can’t be out here like this. You’re not healed yet.’ 

‘My mother. What happened to her? Her body?’

It was difficult for her to prop Ben up; he was so much taller than her and, even injured, so much stronger. It was a marvel, she thought, that she’d even managed to drag him through the World Between Worlds only days before. He snaked an arm around her waist, shivering against her.

‘My mother,’ he repeated. ‘What happened?’

Rey bit her lip. ‘There wasn’t a body...she went to be with the force. I wasn’t there. But that's what Finn said.’

Even in the darkness, she could see him close his eyes and furrow his brow. ‘I didn’t think she could do that.’

‘She was very strong with the force, Ben. Stronger than anyone knew.’

He turned to look at her; she caught the faintest reflection of light in his eyes. ‘Was she? I haven’t seen her since I was ten.’ 

‘I know, Ben,’ she said, and began to steer him back towards the hut. The memory of Leia had brought an unexpected surge of grief, which she knew was partly Ben's, seeping into her through their bond. Leia had been like a mother to her, when the rest of the Resistance saw her as a weapon, a tool, a mystery. Leia had known her to her core, and in turn, Rey knew the regret that the older woman carried wherever she went, all her feelings for Ben wrapped up and buried deep in her heart.

Back indoors, Rey draped a woollen blanket over Ben’s shoulders and began to boil processed water to use for synthstew. He sat on the edge of her cot and stared at the wall. 

‘There’s a memorial for Leia on Chandrila,’ she said, after neither of them had spoken for five minutes. ‘It’s very beautiful.’ 

‘I can’t go to Chandrila,’ he muttered. 

‘Of course you could. We could work something out.’

‘I’d be executed on sight. Don’t be naïve.’ 

Rey bit back a retort, stirring the pot of synthstew. 

‘We could work it out. We’ve got time,’ she said, eventually. 

‘Do we? Really? Do you believe that?’

Rey turned on her heels, pot still in hand. ‘Are you always this bitter?’

‘No. I’m realistic.’ Ben had drawn one knee up to his chest and rested his head upon it, eyeing her from under a knitted brow. ‘Palpatine died before. Do you really think he’s gone for good?’

‘I do.’

‘You do,’ he tutted. ‘And what about his followers. The Sith eternal, the acolytes of the beyond? Are they gone?’

‘No. But they aren’t my concern now.’ She stopped stirring. ‘Would you like something to eat, or do you want to keep being sour?’

‘I’d like something that isn’t just boiled water with some powder mixed in.’

Rey resisted the temptation to fling the spoon at his head. ‘Well, this is all I have.’

‘How far is it to the nearest town? We could trade for something there. I could make something fresh for you.’

‘I hadn’t figured you as a cook, Ben.’

‘I’m not. But at Luke’s temple we all had to take turns cooking. So I know how to make a lot of soup.’

‘Soup?’ she shot back, and his features softened, momentarily, into a smile.

‘So you’re not concerned with the leftovers of Palpatine’s cult. You brought yourself here, to the edge of the galaxy. You say we have time. Yet you’re still eating war rations?’

She handed him a bowl of warm synthstew. ‘You can eat this, or you can starve.’ 

As if their previous conversation had been entirely forgotten, Ben gladly accepted the bowl and began shovelling the lumpy bluish stew into his mouth. Rey sat cross-legged on the floor before him, internally fuming.

‘You’re angry, I can tell,’ he said, around a mouthful of stew. ‘But I’m not sure you believe in what you’re saying yourself. You’re not done with the war. Is that why you brought me back?’

Rey wrapped her hands around the bowl, nursing her cold fingers against its warmth. ‘No. I brought you back because I missed you.’

His eyes met hers. _Because I wanted you,_ she thought, knowing he was listening.

‘The Jedi were always very strict about emotional attachment,’ his stare did not waver. 'No emotion, no possession.'

‘I told you I’m not a Jedi. I live by my own code, not theirs.’

‘How does the galaxy feel about that?’

‘Not my problem,’ she shrugged. ‘I’ve given them enough.’ 

Ben arched an eyebrow, spoonful of synthstew paused in midair.

‘There’s a temple of Jedi on a world in the Lothal system,’ she told him. ‘I had the Jedi texts digitised. Most of the archive material was made available on the holonet, once we seized it from the First Order. A new order formed. They plan to rebuild the Jedi from the start. They can live by that code. Not me. You left the Jedi too, Ben, surely you get it?'

He had almost finished his stew, and was swiping his finger around the rim of the bowl to catch the last of it. 'The decision to leave the Jedi was not mine, Rey. Snoke did not give me a choice. Nor did Luke.'

'Of course,' she muttered, and began to ladle stew into her mouth. It tasted of little more than salt, but like most of the things she’d eaten in her life, it was simply fuel, enough to keep her going until the next ration packet. 

‘Will you tell me what happened on Mustafar?’ he said.

Rey swallowed a mouthful of stew with difficulty. She’d stirred it for too long, and it was claggy, coating her tongue like a film. 

‘Not now,’ she answered. ‘Will you tell me what you did on Mustafar? I know it’s where you found the wayfinder to Exegol.’

He frowned. ‘No. Not now.’ 

‘Maybe we should both forget that we ever went there, then.’ 

Ben set aside his bowl, and Rey followed, dumping her own bowl of half-finished synthstew on the floor. 

‘Tonight, maybe. But not forever,’ he said. 

They both stood at the same time, Rey reaching for their discarded bowls. 

‘Tomorrow?’ he said. ‘Maybe you can go to the nearest town. Get something fresh. Vegetables, if they have them in this system. Herbs. And I can make something that doesn’t taste like processed shoes.’ 

She dropped the dishes into a basin in her small kitchen, where she could rinse them with a canteen of unprocessed water. Ben, behind her, had drawn closer; she felt his hand on her shoulder, gentle and reassuring. She brought her own hand up to cover his, her fingertips tracing his knuckles. 

‘Maybe,’ she said. 

Turning to face him, she felt that familiar tug somewhere between her ribs, one she had first felt alone in her hut on Ahch-To, when he’d been light years away from her, but the fire burning beside her had still reflected in his eyes. He looked somehow softer now than he had then, with his hair growing unkempt and coarse stubble on his jaw, his mouth set with a lopsided smile, small creases at the corners of his eyes. She hadn’t brought him back because she missed this, she reflected - this was something she had only ever had in dreams, visions where he had followed her path, visions where he had taken her hand. She couldn't miss something that had never really been hers.

But she could want it. 

She touched a fingertip to the corner of his lips, the soft skin beneath his right eye, the lock of black hair that had fallen across his forehead. 

‘I brought you back because I wanted this. I’m not a Jedi. I’m just Rey.’ 

‘Just Rey,’ he echoed. 

She slid her arms under his, burying her face in the coarse fabric of his shirt. The shirt he had once died in, which no longer smelled of blood and sweat and char, but of the heavy soap she used to scrub her laundry with. 

‘I’ve been lonely,’ she said.

‘You’ve been lonely your whole life,’ he murmured. ‘We both have.’ 

She kissed him. ‘Not anymore.’ 

His hands skimmed across her back, and then wound through her hair, loosening it from the bun she’d had it tied in all day. 

‘I like your hair this way,’ he said, and kissed her, hungrily. His mouth tasted of the vague antiseptic salt of synthstew, but was warm and soft against hers, and made her forget all the bitterness of their conversation. His broad hands were already under her tunic, grasping at her waist as he kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, her mouth - she wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled him closer, pressing her body to his - already she could feel him straining, his breath hot and fast, hands scrabbling at her thighs to part her legs and lift her up - 

But he was too weak for that, on a leg that hadn’t quite healed, and instead pulled her down onto the edge of the cot so she could sit on his lap.

_Echoes in the force,_ she thought, as he pressed a thumb to the corner of her mouth and she parted her lips obligingly, letting it slip over her tongue. She’d had a vision like this once, in a passing moment of sleep on Ajan Kloss, the night before they’d found out the Emperor had returned. A dream that had persisted in her memory and filled her with shame during waking hours. 

He was already pulling the tunic over her head and fumbling with her belt. Kissing the purpling bruise on her breast. In her dream he had been hesitant, unpracticed. The memory of it was vivid; a vision, through the force, of him pinning her against the throne of the Sith, a confusion of Rey and Kylo Ren that was all teeth and blood and hunger - 

Ben drew away from her, his brow furrowed. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ she breathed, unbuckling his belt. 

His hand covered hers. ‘No. You’re troubled.’

‘Just hot and bothered,’ she frowned, but he had already grasped her shoulder and his eyes roved across her face. 

‘You saw something,’ he said.

‘Only a vision I remembered…’

‘The throne of the Sith. Like this?’

There was no sense in dismissing the memory; he had evidently seen it all. It was difficult to keep secrets in their bond. 

‘Would it have come to pass?’ he said. 

‘Maybe,’ she whispered. 

His hips shifted beneath her, his hardness pressing to the inside of her thigh. It evidently took all of his willpower to keep her positioned like this, upright and held at arm’s length. 

‘I saw something similar. After I killed Snoke. If you had taken my hand then - perhaps both our visions would have become real.’

‘If I had taken your hand then,’ she answered, ‘We would not have this. Now.’ 

His eyes glimmered with excitement. ‘You dreamt that we defiled the throne of the Sith.’ 

A wolfish smile. The thought of it evidently turned him on. She moved past the disgust and shame she’d felt immediately after waking from the dream, all those years ago, and kissed him. 

‘Yes, we did.’ 

‘That would be worth flying to Exegol for,’ he remarked.

She pinched the back of his neck, making him yelp with pain.

‘Don’t be twisted.’ 

_We both died there,_ she thought. And so many others had died there, and hadn’t had the second chances the force had granted them.

All the same, the dream was vivid, and parts of it were being fleshed out now, in the way his hands roved her body, gripped her hips, almost tore at her clothing in the rush to remove it. His fingers, trailing a path across her stomach and then curving down to touch her where she ached, burned, parting the place where she had opened for him only hours before and slipping inside. 

She bit down on his lip. With a twitch of surprise, his fingers cocked inside her, and she moaned into his mouth.

‘No?’ he murmured, caution in his voice.

‘Yes,’ she said, and pushed herself against his palm. He buried his face against her collarbone, gently sucking against the skin there, so she could arc her head back and make soft keening noises at the ceiling. 

‘You brought me back for this,’ he whispered into the hollow of her neck.

‘This,’ she gasped. ‘And more.’ 

He laughed at that, and pressed deeper into her. She tugged at the hem of his shirt with unsteady hands, until he relented and helped her pull it over his head, before shifting so she could unfasten his trousers and then discard them, too, in a pile on the floor. Then, falling back against the mattress, he hooked a thumb around the waistband of her underwear and pulled it down to her thighs, over her knees, until she could kick it off onto the floor as well. She ran her fingertips through tightly coiled hair, along the tops of his thighs, until he shuddered and gasped her name into her mouth. 

Like she’d done that morning, she took him in her hand, a jolt of delight in her stomach as she felt how he was hard and soft all at once, pliant, as if he was melting into the mattress at her touch. He shuddered as her hand moved up and down, and that jolt of delight seemed to course through her body, down to her outstretched toes. 

His hands suddenly grasped at her hips and pulled her roughly on top. 

‘Please?’ he asked; a question, this time. 

She shifted about until they could fit comfortably together, and eased onto him, her body lowered against his so she could kiss at his neck and the coarse stubble of his jaw and feel his hot breath against her ear. The texts she’d read on force dyads had never mentioned this, the way his feelings echoed into her, and she could feel the thrill of how warm and tight her body felt around his. Perhaps nobody had ever had what they did; perhaps the force had never worked like this, not until they met. 

Ben’s hands gripped at her waist, pushing against her. 

‘Sit up,’ he said. ‘Please. Let me look at you.’ 

She sat back. He gazed up at her, eyes wide and glimmering, mouth agape, chest rising and falling with quick, shallow breaths. 

‘I never thought it would be like this,’ he said, but then she shifted her weight and he shivered with pleasure, eyes flickering shut. 

Rey leaned forwards, pressing her lips to his cheek. ‘What did you think it would be like?’

But he responded only with a moan, his hips moving against hers, until they were both spent and lying side-by-side on the narrow cot. 

Afterwards, when the cold had eventually got to them and Rey had drawn up the blanket, Ben pressed his hand against her temple and sent her the vision he’d had of the two of them in Snoke’s throne room.

‘That’s what I saw,’ he murmured, burying his face into the curve of her neck. ‘Like your vision of the throne of the Sith.’

Rey chewed her lip. It had been painful to see that possible branch of her past, one where she’d taken Ben’s hand in the Supremacy’s throne room. When he was still not entirely Ben, and the Emperor still waited in their future. 

‘I had so many visions,’ he continued. ‘Possibilities. Of what could happen.’

‘Me too,’ she said, knowing that for every vision she’d had of Ben, there had been one of Kylo too.

‘After I went to Exegol. The first time. I had a vision - or maybe a dream. I saw all the stars going out, all the systems, one by one.’ 

‘If we had failed - maybe that would have become true.’

‘Maybe. From what I can see, they seem to still be there.’

She ran a hand through his hair, brushing a few loose strands away from his face. 

‘For now,’ he said, and kissed her shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok, there's more than just sex scenes in the next couple of chapters, just been enjoying writing that smUT.
> 
> also, if anyone else is following the rise of kylo ren comic - - it has succeeded in hurting all three of my feelings ;___;


	8. Chapter Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There had been nights like this before. After Crait, she'd evidently tried to sever their force bond, but he still managed to reach her in odd moments when her guard was down. Like late at night - sometimes daytime for him, since they were always in different systems - when he would turn and see her curled up on the other side of the room, half-asleep, watching him with guarded eyes. Sometimes, he'd wake with a start and see her staring at him, lips parted as if to speak - and then she would vanish, like a fleeting dream.
> 
> This only served to frustrate him. She'd had her chances - several of them - to join him. They could have accomplished so much together. Confronted the Emperor earlier, and perhaps both survived. But Rey had always had that thing his mother had always held on to, and that Snoke had told him was a weakness: hope. Her whole life had been spent hoping, just as his had been spent surrendering; to Snoke, to the dark side, to the Emperor, to fear. She always held on to the hope that she could dictate the path of his life.

Ben barely slept that night, pressed awkwardly against the wall in Rey’s cot while she tossed and turned in her sleep beside him. He had always had trouble sleeping, even from a young age, when he’d first learned that staying up late meant he could overhear the worried, whispered conversations his parents held about him. And when he was tired, he was less likely to break things accidentally with the force and incur their fear. 

The mist outside cleared at some point, and he watched the glow of moonlight drag across the floor like a search beam. It would be bitter and frosty outside come morning. With each centimetre of flooring the moonbeam claimed, he felt the growing knot of anxiety in his stomach tighten. 

It was as if he was frozen in place, pinned between Rey and the wall, unable to move or do anything more than watch the moonlight, or listen to the rise and fall of Rey's steady breath. She slept with her back to him, the blanket drawn up over her shoulder and her arms crossed tight over her chest; a defensive position, he thought. Every so often, she would shift in her sleep, and a lock of her hair would brush over his face - small moments of comfort in a sleepless, anxious night.

There had been nights like this before. After Crait, she'd evidently tried to sever their force bond, but he still managed to reach her in odd moments when her guard was down. Like late at night - sometimes daytime for him, since they were always in different systems - when he would turn and see her curled up on the other side of the room, half-asleep, watching him with guarded eyes. Sometimes, he'd wake with a start and see her staring at him, lips parted as if to speak - and then she would vanish, like a fleeting dream.

This only served to frustrate him. She'd had her chances - several of them - to join him. They could have accomplished so much together. Confronted the Emperor earlier, and perhaps both survived. But Rey had always had that thing his mother had always held on to, and that Snoke had told him was a weakness: hope. Her whole life had been spent hoping, just as his had been spent surrendering; to Snoke, to the dark side, to the Emperor, to fear. She always held on to the hope that she could dictate the path of his life.

The knot in his stomach tightened. She _had_ been able to do that, by using concentrations of force energy to traverse space and time, and drag his dying body from Exegol into a world where he'd been dead for nine years. But she'd made that decision alone. Whoever governed the galaxy now, he was certain they'd rather he would stay dead. Or rot in a prison somewhere in the Outer Rim. Perhaps they would even execute him. 

It took all of his willpower to stay in bed, stay calm and steady. Stay focused on the path of moonlight and the curve of Rey's freckled shoulder. She - unfortunately, at times - had always been a calming presence. Now that there was time to rest, he was able to look back on all he'd done in his life; all the things he'd burned and broken. _Nothing is unbreakable,_ he'd said once, as a mantra for his troops in battle. There was nothing in the galaxy that couldn't be broken - not Snoke, not the Emperor, not him.

Except for Rey, apparently. Rey and her hope.

She was only delaying the inevitable, he knew. He'd been destined to die the moment he flew to Exegol. From the moment she'd stabbed him with his own saber, then healed him (that strange new power that had become his, too, thanks to their bond). He had gone to face the Emperor then knowing that he wouldn't return. That if he did, he could not be allowed to live, not with his past. 

She could keep him here, at the edge of the galaxy on Lah'mu, but someone would find out. Finn or Chewie or the pilot Dameron would talk. Or even the planet’s other settlers. And then the past would catch up with him. 

He wondered if it would be kinder to leave of his own accord. Give himself up to Coruscant, or just fly into deep space, somewhere uncharted. Give Rey an explanation. Closure. With a jolt, he realised that if it wasn’t for her journey into the place she had called the Vergence Scatter, she would have had that closure all along; he would have died on Exegol. 

The first glimmers of sunlight soon lapped at the window. Rey shifted in her sleep, again, and turned to face him, her breath warm and slight against the hollow of his neck. He stroked a hand against her cheek, and she stirred, drowsily, murmuring. Through their bond, he could sense her dreaming; the loose, unconnected flow of her thoughts. 

‘Rey,’ he whispered, and her eyelids fluttered. ‘What happened on Mustafar?’

*

She can't remember how or when, but at some point she has sustained a head injury; blood trickles down her neck, down her spine, like the gentle touch of a cold fingertip.

The air is toxic. Each breath twists like a knife in the core of her chest. If she coughs, the sickly ache in her head gets worse, so she tries not to breathe. Tries not to think. Tries not to see. The force is her guide here, moving her feet forward step-by-step, controlling the hand that moves her saber back and forth. Controlling her voice, and the guttural sound she makes when her saber connects with the black-robed cultist who has fallen before her. The impact of the blade shudders in her arm. Then the smell of charred flesh makes her choke, and she is gasping for air again.

Another place that isn't worth the fight. Another place where Ben has been before her, where traces of his presence haunt her. She has grown used to finding little parts of him here and there in the galaxy, but it still aches to sense his footsteps just ahead of hers, not yet buried by the passage of time. He was here five years before her, existing somewhere between Kylo Ren and Ben, looking for the wayfinder that would eventually take them both to Exegol. To their deaths. 

The force gives her another surge of energy, like a reassuring hand on the small of her back. She raises her saber and strikes against another figure in black robes, one who has raised a wooden staff to block her. But the saber cleaves it in two and hews through the cultist's body. The saber cauterises the wound instantly and there is no blood, but she can still smell it, rich and nauseating, in the toxic air. 

Every place Ben has been rekindles the hope within her that he will appear, blue and translucent, and explain everything, and she will show him the filthy blood-crusted clothes of his that she took from Exegol and they will know that nothing can stand in the way of their bond, not even death. And every place Ben has been winds up holding nothing more than whispers of his voice and faint echoes of his footsteps, and she always leaves with that hope hidden again, like hands enclosing a flame. 

There is still so much she has to ask of him, and Leia, who hasn't appeared to Rey since that mirage in the Tatooine desert that may have been her imagination. Still so much to ask of Luke, who hasn't answered her calls for help in a while, not since the incident on Jedha. Maybe Luke is scared of her now, too, like he was scared of his own nephew. In her optimistic moments, she hopes he has gone on somewhere else, where he can rest his soul and not concern himself with the troubles of a scavenger girl who was briefly the galaxy's last hope. 

This is a place she would have liked to ask Luke about. Ben, too, now she knows that he walked this path before she did. Vader's castle, somehow still standing despite Mustafar's toxic climate and churning topography. A nexus of the dark side. Still a focus for acolytes of the Sith, who she has been tasked with finding and capturing.

Capturing, she reminds herself, as another wave of sickly pain radiates from the back of her head, and she steps over the body of the Bith she just cut down. This is a place of pain, of dark power, of suffering and anger just barely contained within mortar and stone. It seeps from the bedrock like blood from a fresh wound. A true dark side user, a true Sith, would draw on this as fuel, would internalise that fear and that anguish and use it as power. But Rey is Rey, the last remaining Jedi, and so she must plow on with what little of the light she can still hold on to, because she is not allowed to fail. There is nobody else who can do what she does. 

She hears her name being called; Finn has followed. She can sense him running towards her, a few rooms over - he must have followed the sound of fighting, or perhaps the signature of her depleting energy. 

Rey has learned to hide herself from Finn in recent months. He has become strong in the force, and somehow is now able to map the layout of her feelings. In return, all she feels from him is pity. Worry. Compassion. And he shouldn't, because he has a family now, one they discovered in the First Order's records. He has a family, and a home planet, and an identity, and Poe. He is the only thing she has left, besides the force. 

Places like this amplify the thought she has had for the past year or so. She would not like to die - her survival instincts are too sharp, and she knows that too many depend on her - but she would like to be dead. She would like to stop existing, to stop being the last Jedi, to stop having constant headaches and a sore back, to stop looking for Ben and Luke and Leia wherever she goes. 

Her vision swims and is dark at the edges. Without realising, she has reached Vader's throne, in the central hall of the castle. An imposing slab of black stone, carved to support the weight of a cyborg almost twice her size. 

She makes a fist of her hand, feels her fingernails biting into the skin of her palm. Visualises the castle imploding on this point, collapsing into dust and ruin. No longer a site of pilgrimage. Not even a grave. She visualises the ground being flattened, the stone carried away and jettisoned to space. The land trampled down and ploughed. They could plant something here, maybe, if there's anything that will grow in this toxic earth. 

Rey makes a note to check on that, when they’re back on the ship and she’s had time to visit the med-droid. Before they get their next set of orders. When she’s had a chance to eat a ration pack and catch a few hours of sleep and maybe get a few bacta shots in all the parts of her that hurt.

One more cultist. Another Bith, with a hissing vibroblade. In the double vision the force grants her, she perceives the Bith slashing out towards her stomach. She turns and parries with her saber, but her arms ache, everything aches, everything is sore and exhausted.

She lets a little of the dark energy into her. A little part of the force to steel her reserve. A hot pit of rage, long suppressed, comes to life in her stomach. It seems to surge through her limbs and tighten her grip on her saber, delivering a final, fatal blow, just as a bolt of lightning surges from her left hand and sparks against the chamber wall, shearing off a lump of stone.

And then the energy is spent, and she is trembling, on her knees, saber crackling and spiked into the marble floor. 

There's no use stopping now. Not when she knows that everything she needs to finish the job lies in the dark side of the force. It is a part of her, after all. It's always been a part. 

Lightning, blue and bright, arcs from her fingertips. Pain sears in her head, then through her body. Like her blood is laced with poison. The throne cracks, splits in two. Stone shatters. Then blasts against the wall, into a shower of dust. 

She is bringing the wall down when Finn arrives, piece by piece. He shouts her name again. A wave of fear hits her through the force. Fear that feeds the dark side, and the dark side that gives her new, raw energy.

Finn keeps screaming her name. She wishes he would stop doing that. He has always followed her, even when she doesn’t want him to. 

Dust settles on her boots. Clings to her eyelashes, to the tacky blood on her face. She smells ash and ozone, and realises that her hand is outstretched, thumb and forefinger pinched together. Finn is clutching at his throat. Eyes wide. Froth at the corner of his mouth. 

She releases her grip. Finn falls to his knees. Force double-vision: Poe coming towards her, blaster in hand. Yelling for Finn. She sees, a moment in the future, his finger on the trigger, set for stun.

And welcomes the shot that wipes out the world. 

*

He surfaced from Rey’s memory to find the room around them bathed in weak, watery sunlight, with condensation pooling on the windowpane. She shifted in his arms, drawing the blanket up to her chin. Her face was slick with tears.

‘I should have expected that,’ she said, quietly. ‘After I went into your head.’ 

He ran his fingers through her hair. ‘That’s what you were afraid of me seeing?’

‘You should have asked when I wasn’t half asleep.’

The knowledge of what she’d done on Mustafar had done nothing to dispel the ever-tightening knot of anxiety in his stomach, although he now knew this was partly a reflection of her own memories; he saw the week she’d spent on Coruscant afterwards, holed up in an apartment in the Senate district, while Poe on Chandrila refused to answer her comms and tell her how Finn was doing. The hearing in front of a senate committee. And, eventually, the verdict, the flight back to Chandrila, where she’d been staying with Finn and Poe - an arrangement that couldn’t possibly continue - and then the moment she decided to pack a bag of rations and plot a course for the most remote planet she could get to in Luke’s X-wing without refuelling. Until then, it had been destined for a museum, but it was really one of the only things Rey actually owned, and it was easy to convince the spaceport manager in Hanna City that she just wanted to take it for one last flight. 

Then the first few days on Lah’mu, where she’d slept curled up in the X-wing’s cockpit and wondered where to go.

Back in the present, Rey pushed him aside and slid out of the bed, heading for the fresher.

‘You shouldn’t have worried,’ he called after her. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

She reappeared in the doorway, shivering a little in the cold air, her arms wrapped tight over her chest. 

‘I’d rather not do this right now.’

He sat up, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders. ‘They let you go. After what you did. What do you think they’d do to me?’

She shook her head. ‘I won’t let them do anything to you.’

‘You think you could stop them?’

Rey disappeared into the fresher again. ‘Not now, Ben.’ 

_Yes, now,_ he thought. _You don’t realise what you’ve done._

But she stayed silent, and her mind - open only moments before - was stubbornly blank. He pushed back the blanket, ignoring the cold, and began to dress. 

_Rey,_ he thought. _You can’t avoid it. You need to think about this._

_Shut up,_ she shot back. _Just shut up, please._

He crossed the room and began to search through her small kitchen for food, for something that wasn’t claggy synthstew or tasteless protein bread, but eventually had to content himself with a beaker of processed, stale-tasting water. Rey’s simmering anger echoed through the air, filling his thoughts, until he felt he could tear every ration packet into shreds.

The fresher clicked off; Rey entered the room, violently scrubbing at her wet hair with a cloth.

‘What did you think was going to happen when you brought me back? How did you think this was going to go?’

She shivered, partly with cold, partly with anger, her face flushed red - but her voice was cool and composed. 

‘I almost killed my best friend. You saw it. And all you can think about is yourself.’ 

‘But he forgave you, didn’t he? Nothing came of it.’

‘What came of it was this,’ she spat. ‘Living here.’

‘Your choice,’ he retorted. 

She glared at him, snatching up her clothes from the floor and dressing, hurriedly, in the same thick blue tunic and woollen trousers she’d worn the day before. 

‘I’m going out,’ she announced, winding a scarf around her neck. 

‘Where?’

‘To get those things you wanted. Since nothing here is good enough for you.’

‘I didn't say that. I don’t think it’s good enough for _you_.’

She turned and stalked out of the hut. ‘Same thing.’ 

He followed her outside; the frosted grass crunched under his feet. Snow had fallen during the night on the distant hills, each one capped with white.

Rey swore in a language that sounded like Huttese. 

‘It’ll all be frozen,’ she said, indicating her moisture processors. ‘Great.’ 

‘Like I said, it was your choice to live here.’

She turned to glare at him again. ‘Don’t you lecture me on choices.’

‘How could I? I’ve rarely had the luxury of them.’ 

Rey threw up her arms in frustration. ‘You’ve had plenty of choices-’

‘Have I? I didn’t choose to have Snoke in my head. I didn’t choose to become a Jedi, or to leave-’

‘You chose the First Order. I gave you the choice to come with me.’

‘And what would have happened then? Would we have survived against them? I think not, Rey-’

‘How do you know that? There’s no use thinking on that, Ben,’ she tutted. ‘It’s all in the past now.’

‘So is Mustafar. And yet you’re still here.’

Rey turned on her heel and walked the length of the garden to the nearest moisture processor, trying to put some distance between herself and Ben. _Antisocial, moody Ben,_ she reminded herself, thinking of what Leia had told her. 

But Ben wasn’t done, and followed her, limping on his injured leg.

‘Have you even thought about what we’re doing? What if you got pregnant? Would you bring a child into this galaxy, knowing what happened to us because of our parents?’

Her face went hot, knowing this was something she hadn’t considered - partly out of practicality, because she seldom got her blood in the years she’d lived in near-starvation on Jakku, or in constant stress with the Resistance, or even now, on Lah’mu.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t,’ he spat. ‘But you never seem to _think._ You just _do_.’ 

‘I’ve thought about this for years. I’ve worked and studied and-’

‘And you never thought about me? What I’d want?’

His fists clenched, and she knew that if they weren’t in the middle of a field, he would have found something to throw.

‘I thought you’d be happy to survive,’ she said. There was no use projecting calm through the force; Ben was a nexus of force energy in his own right, and she could feel his anger gathering like a distant storm, an echo of her own rage. 

‘You’ve been in my head. You know the answer to that. Are you even happy to survive?’

‘Yes!’

‘Then move on!’ he yelled, storming towards her. ‘If it weren’t for this, if it weren’t for what you did - there would have been a body, you could have dragged my corpse out to your X-wing and flown it back to the Resistance and buried the whole cursed Skywalker family deep underground, tramped down the dirt and found yourself closure and the means to get on with your little life.’

His finger jabbed in the air, mere inches from her clenched jaw. 

‘Selfish, Rey. That’s what this is. I only had one choice in my life - I could have you, or I could have death. So I chose you. I wish you had buried me. I wish I could bury myself.’ 

She swallowed back angry tears. Let her hands tremble at her sides. 

'Are you only content to be alive when you're inside me?'

'That's not an unreasonable accusation,' he glowered. 'You never learned to let things die, Rey.’

'I have nothing to learn,' she spat. 'Not from you.'

'Clearly.'

He had turned and began to limp back down the garden, towards her hut.

‘If you fixed the hyperdrive in that junk X-wing you have, I would fly back to Exegol without a moment’s hesitation.’

‘I’ll keep it broken, then!’ she shouted, trailing behind. ‘I’ll crash it into the sea!’

‘What are we supposed to do, then?’ the anger was fading from his voice. ‘Stay on this backwater rock and be damp and muddy forever?’

Rey had already spent years weighing up the possibilities. 

‘We could tell them the truth of Ben Solo, of what you did, and trust in the force that they’ll see sense. Or we could travel around and never settle. We could find another place in the Outer Rim where nobody knows our faces. We could cut your hair and pretend you’re a radar technician I met. Or, we could stay here and be damp and muddy forever.’

She had drawn level with him; he could not outpace her with his injuries. Her hand caught his.

‘We could be together. Anywhere in the galaxy. Anywhere we like. We could find our place.’

‘I wish you had buried me,’ he repeated. His voice was like a bruise. He never could quite say what he wanted, not unless it was a demand. 

‘Ben…you get what I have. And what Finn got, and everyone else gets…a life. Because I don’t think you ever really got one.’ 

He was sinking to the ground, hands scrabbling at her tunic, her legs, reaching for something to grasp onto. She knew he was still listening for a voice that had long since been silenced.

‘We can stay here while you heal,’ Rey lowered herself to the ground, squatting to keep her knees out of the mud. ‘And be damp and muddy. But not for long.’ 

‘You don’t have to take care of me,’ he choked. ‘I don’t deserve it.’

‘I think you do.’

His hands were on her shoulders, his face pressed against her neck. ‘Hold onto me,’ he said. 

The freezing mud splashed onto her trousers and began to soak through as she fell forward, into his grasp. His universe was still shifting, she knew, around a collapsed star. He hadn’t yet learned how to live with his own silence. 

All things would come in time.

‘I know,’ she whispered, and let him howl and scream against her body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long, sad chapter!! The next chapter is the last one, and I promise it isn't as angsty. Is that a spoiler? Nah. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone who's read this so far - it's a bit of a slog, I know, I realise by this point I could have accomplished this entire story in, like, an eighth of the word count. But it happened, and it's here, and I appreciate you reading it. Got some more Reylo ideas on the go, hopefully I'll have time to write and post them!
> 
> The 'nothing is unbreakable' line comes from the Age of Resistance: Villains - Kylo Ren comic, from a scene where Kylo yeets himself down the throat of a Zillo Beast mid-battle. Lots of quality Kylo content in that series~


	9. Chapter Nine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘I have a list of places I’d like to go some day,’ she offered. ‘If you’re amenable.’

He let Rey cut his hair in the first few weeks of spring, when the bloom of yellow flowers replaced snow on the distant hills. In the time it had taken his injuries to fully heal his hair grown overlong, almost past his shoulders. After she had attacked it with a small knife it hung just over his ears; the shortest he’d worn it since he’d been a Padawan. He’d grown a beard, too, but decided to keep this as it was. He’d never worn one before. It reminded him too much of his father. But Rey liked it and, besides, it was easier to let it be.

She eventually cut her own hair too, telling him it was about time for a change, because she was nearly thirty now. He liked the way it now hung just to her chin, framing her face, making it somehow softer. 

After the healing, there was time to train, because his body had gone soft and weak with bedrest, and he wasn’t sure what purpose he served in life unless he could fight. Rey was happy to oblige, and, nevertheless, made a good sparring partner - as she had done when they’d still fought against each other, instead of together. He wasn’t as good a mechanic as she was, but she taught him how to maintain the moisture processing equipment dotted about her land, and soon they yielded enough potable water to trade for a small Holonet receiver that he used to catch up on almost a decade’s worth of news from across the galaxy. 

With some salvage from Lah’mu’s distant spaceport and a bundle of strong wood from the nearest forest, Rey was also able to build a bigger bed, one that they could both comfortably sleep on without the risk of backache or kicking each other out. 

They made a life for themselves on Lah'mu without really noticing, until the seasons changed again and the mild weather turned to rain and fog and, eventually, snow. Then the moisture farm froze over, and Rey had to hack apart lumps of ice with her yellow saber while he coaxed uncooperative pump mechanisms back to life.

Back in the hut, he prepared honeyed porridge and a pot of Gatalentan tea for both of them. 

‘I’d like my own lightsaber,’ he said. ‘I’ve had one most of my life. I don’t like being without it.’

She didn’t look up from her bowl. ‘You’re just jealous of mine.’

‘You’re right, I am jealous. I’m also serious. I’d like to build another saber. Where did you find your Kyber?’

‘Why, do you want to go?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And maybe we should leave Lah'mu altogether.’

Rey frowned. ‘Why would we leave?’

‘Because we’ve grown too comfortable here, and you know we’re made for more than this. You did fix your X-wing.’

She pursed her lips, but then nodded.

‘I have a list of places I’d like to go some day,’ she offered. ‘If you’re amenable.’

‘Well, we need to trade the X-wing for something bigger,’ he said. ‘It’s junk anyway.’

‘Well that’s just rude,’ she said, and dug back into her porridge.

‘Or leave it somewhere it could be used. Maybe on Chandrila. Maybe your friend Dameron can worship it.’

‘You don’t want to go to Chandrila,’ she said. ‘You said so yourself.’

‘No, but it doesn’t stop us from going. We could use the radar technician story. I think I look different enough.’ 

‘You’re a terrible technician. You’d blow your cover.’

‘Maybe,’ he shrugged. ‘I mean it, though. We’re made for more than this. You never finished hunting down the last of the Sith, did you?’

Rey brought the mug of tea to her lips and regarded him cooly through the spiralling, fragrant steam.

‘Let’s talk about this later, Ben.’ 

And in a few days they had packed up Rey’s few belongings, loaded the X-wing, and left Lah'mu behind, Rey having sold her just-defrosted moisture farm for a healthy bag of credits. It was an uncomfortable journey: the X-wing had only been designed for one pilot. Not for the two of them together, with Rey squeezed awkwardly onto his lap. 

After a few hours’ of flying, at which point Ben could no longer feel his thighs and Rey was complaining about the cockpit being too hot, they jumped out of hyperspace near Chandrila. There was a short conversation with spaceport control - who accepted Rey’s code but couldn’t understand quite why anyone would fly an X-wing of that age to Chandrila, let alone through hyperspace - and then they were assigned a landing pad in Hanna City. 

Ben agreed to stay in the X-wing, out of sight, while Rey walked to a nearby Holonet relay and hailed Finn. Her code was evidently something Finn had arranged, because the spaceport customs officials didn’t so much as glance at the X-wing the whole time it was parked there.

Soon enough, Rey was back at the ship, a steaming container of food in her hands.

‘I woke Finn up,’ she said. ‘So he’s not happy, but he says we can land at theirs in about half an hour. I brought us some food.’

She handed Ben the container and he inhaled, relishing the familiar smell of sweet, spiced Chandrilan noodles.

‘I haven’t had this since I was a child,’ he said, shifting in his seat so Rey could join him. 

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I saw it in your head.’ 

They ate quickly, taking turns to drink the hearty broth directly from the container. After years of ration packets, both in the First Order and in those first few months on Lah’mu, it was the best thing he thought he’d ever tasted. 

When they were done, Rey ran a set of engine checks, and then plotted a course to a nearby settlement - no more than ten minutes’ flight.

‘You sure you’re okay to see Finn?’ she asked. ‘And Poe? I don’t know if Poe will be there, but…’

He nodded, and she twisted in the seat to briefly kiss him, a kiss that left a lingering taste of spice and broth. 

Finn and Poe lived in a semi-rural area outside of Hanna City, in a small house with a garden and a landing pad that could almost be a spaceport in its own right. Rey guided them in for a landing next to a flashy Corellian light freighter and matching speeder bike - a ship, Ben thought, that his father would have drooled over. Finn was waiting for them in the garden. Behind him, at the door of the house, stood Poe.

As soon as the X-wing landed and Rey had powered down the engines, she threw back the cockpit window and jumped out to greet Finn. Ben could sense the pain, the yearning in Finn when he embraced Rey, and knew that he missed her bitterly, and only wished she would speak to them more often, despite all she'd done to put distance between herself and her old Resistance life. No matter what had happened on Mustafar or Exegol, no matter how much she tried to sever the connection between her life and theirs, Finn still loved her. Poe, too, no matter how well he hid it. 

Like family, Ben thought. Like the way his parents had still loved him. That love - that yearning - stuck like a knife in his ribs. 

Poe, in the distance, raised a hand in greeting, and Finn looked between him and Rey.

‘You can both come in,’ he said. ‘Poe can deal.’ 

He followed Rey and Finn along the garden, past patches of just-sprouting kitchen herbs and planters of spindly, tri-leafed plants. Poe, up close, was older than Ben remembered, with a greying beard and deep lines across his forehead. 

‘Come in, I guess,’ he said, holding the door open, his eyes avoiding Ben. 

Inside, their house was a delight of earthen colours and soft, worn furnishings; something in the air smelled sweet and ripe, like a bowl of just-ready fruit. Rey had been living like a martyr, he realised, in her sparse and unlovely hut, with her utilitarian tools and and ration packs. 

_We could live like this,_ he thought, and sensed her smiling. 

‘So,’ Poe said, leaning by the sink while they all took seats at an uneven wooden table. ‘Finn says you’re leaving the X-wing? How much do you want for it?’

‘Nothing,’ Rey said. ‘It’s junk.’

‘It’s _Luke Skywalker’s_ X-wing, that’s what it is,’ Poe said. ‘Someone would give you thousands of credits for that. Unfortunately,’ he dipped his head. ‘I don’t have thousands of credits.’

‘It’s yours. I don’t need any credits for it. Mostly because it needs a lot of repair work,’ Rey said. ‘What I do need is a bigger ship. Maybe a freighter. Know where we can get one?’

‘Do I look like a spaceport?’ he shot back.

‘No. But it’s not easy for us to visit one.’

‘You want me to buy you a freighter?’

Rey dumped her bag of credits on the table. ‘Yes. Think of the X-wing as commission.’ 

Finn let out a low whistle. ‘He isn’t good enough for _that_ much commission.’ 

Rey reached out and squeezed Ben’s knee under the table. ‘I thought it was a big ask.’

‘Fine,’ Poe shrugged. ‘I can get you a freighter. But what do you need it for?’

‘To go somewhere,’ Rey said.

‘Where?’

‘Just somewhere.’

‘Can we visit?’ Finn burst out. ‘Can _you_ visit _us?’_

‘Maybe,’ she said. 

'Where are you going, Rey?' Poe leaned forward, his fingers steepled together. 'It would be nice if you told us this time. Polite, even.'

Rey faltered. 'There isn't really a plan.' 

'But you want a freighter. Fine,' Poe reached for the bag of credits. 'I'll get you a nice Corellian something. You want Gundark-hide seats? A cupholder?'

Ben wanted to lean over and smack the credits out of Poe's hand, but Rey was smiling. 

‘I trust your judgement,’ she said. 

‘But seriously, Rey,’ Finn cut in. ‘What’s your plan?’

Rey chewed at her lip. 

_You don’t have to tell them,_ Ben thought.

_Yes I do,_ she replied. _They’re all we have._

‘Nowhere specific,’ she admitted. ‘But…there’s probably still followers of the Sith out there, aren’t there? Somewhere in the Galaxy. We’re going to do some travelling…some research. Work out a strategy for how to deal with them. Together.’

Finn stared at her, slack-mouthed, but Poe nodded grimly. 

‘You need help?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘But we’ll stay in touch.’ 

Finn looked as though he might complain. His eyes narrowed, and then he shook his head.

‘It’s your funeral,’ he managed, at last.

Poe stood, lifting the bag of credits. Then his gaze settled on Ben, who had been the only one at the table who hadn’t spoken. The wheels seemed to turn in his mind, and Ben caught a torrent of disconnected, vitriolic thoughts about the war flowing, and then-

Poe’s hand went to his face, and motioned his chin.

‘Beard,’ he struggled. ‘Looks good.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I said there would only be one more chapter, but it got long, so there's actually ANOTHER one after this.
> 
> Thanks, as always, for reading!


	10. Chapter Ten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finn had tried to explain everything Rey had told him about the so-called dyad, and the bizarre telepathy she seemed to have with Ben - but he was skeptical enough himself, and they’d already been over it several times. 
> 
> ‘I guess we aren’t meant to see it,’ he had replied.

Later, once Poe had sent a comm from Hanna City to confirm the acquisition of an VCX-700 light freighter, Finn motioned Rey out into the garden. 

_Stay here,_ she sent to Ben. 

_Gladly,_ he sent back, glowering at the wall over his glass of Corellian whisky.

Outside, the sun was just beginning to set, and the Chandrilan dusk was a soft, muted blue.

‘I don’t want you to go,’ Finn said. 

His voice was calm, but she sensed the pain within. It was sometimes hard to be alone with Finn, since Mustafar, and she now felt a growing unease.

‘I don’t know if there’s much of a choice,’ she replied. ‘We can’t settle anywhere. Not Ben, anyway…’

‘So you’re giving it up. Peace, quiet…for him.’

‘Yes. I’ve told you before, we’re-’

‘A dyad. I know.’

Finn shot a furtive glance towards the house and lowered his voice, although Rey knew Ben would be listening intently.

‘Rey, I was half-certain this would fail. That he’d…I dunno. Still be a homicidal maniac.’

‘He’s not.’

Finn shrugged. ‘I’ve got to trust you, I know. I just wish your plan involved, you know, staying around a bit longer. I’ve got training to finish. And…it would be good to see you more often.’

Rey attempted a smile. ‘I’m being selfish,’ she said. 

His eyes flickered back towards the house.

'You understand, though - whatever you see, me and Poe don't. Your...dyad. That's not something we get. I know, we've had this conversation before, but...'

Finn trailed off, and then they were both silent. Suddenly, the twilight air felt cold. 

'You don't see it,' Rey said, eventually. 'I've been in his head. I know what he's been through.'

'I know what _we've_ been through,' Finn countered. 'Look - we trust you. Still. I'm just saying...keep in touch. Don't be a stranger. Please.'

Before she could respond, his hand squeezed her shoulder, and then pulled her into an embrace.

'I will,' she said, swallowing back tears. She owed Finn more than this; that much she knew. He'd been her closest friend from the start, from the moment they'd chosen to trust each other and escape Jakku in a stolen freighter. Despite everything that had happened, he still trusted her. He still loved her like a sister. 

But it was difficult to look at him and not think of Mustafar. How far she had fallen.

Ben would help, she reasoned with herself. Now he was back, things could start making sense again. 

*

It was difficult for Finn to watch them leave. Equally, it had been difficult for Poe to let them stay the night, curled up with some spare blankets in their living room. Ren - or Ben, he reminded himself - had been eager to leave, but Rey decided they would fly better after a night of sleep and a good breakfast.

'I don't see it,' Poe had said. 'I just can't. What is she seeing that we aren't?'

Finn had tried to explain everything Rey had told him about the so-called dyad, and the bizarre telepathy she seemed to have with Ben - but he was skeptical enough himself, and they’d already been over it several times. 

‘I guess we aren’t meant to see it,’ he had replied. 

Poe shrugged. ‘Whatever makes her happy.’

Then, in the morning, they had helped Rey pack a stash of dried food for the journey, and watched as she ran her pre-flight checks on their newly-acquired freighter. Ben, who had got up before anyone else and stayed on the ship during breakfast, could just be seen through the cockpit window, glowering out at the sky. 

Then the inevitable came, and Rey was embracing them both while Ben hung back at the freighter’s landing ramp - glowering, again, at nothing in particular. 

It hurt to see her leave. It always had. For years, she had been a constant in his life; a source of help, of advice, of understanding. She had always known what to do when he hadn’t. But this was a path he could not follow down or even access. Whatever Ben Solo meant to Rey, he was an inscrutable shadow to Finn. A source of darkness.

Rey had been gone a while, he thought, as the freighter’s sublight engines hummed and she gradually piloted the ship over the house. Gone for a few years, at least. 

Poe’s arm gripped his waist with a comforting squeeze, and a palpable sense of relief flowed between them. 

*

The freighter might have been secondhand, but it flew as smoothly as if it were new. Rey, pert and awake in the pilot’s seat, grinned out at the soft blue of the of the Chandrilan sky as they flew through the lower atmosphere. She was giddy, and Ben felt briefly drunk on the waves of nervous excitement that coursed through the cockpit.

‘I haven’t piloted anything like this in years,’ she said. 

Neither had he, given that he’d almost exclusively piloted TIE-class fighters for most of his life. Nothing spacious and homely like the freighter was. It reminded him of the Falcon, of the sort of ships his father favoured. 

He felt the tension lift from his body. Here, it was just the two of them. No Finn or Poe, nobody who wished him the death he still felt he deserved. Just Rey and her infinite patience. 

She rested her hand on the yoke and turned to look at him. He’d seen her do this before, he realised, in a dream or vision. 

‘Where first?’ she said. ‘Kyber crystal?’

He slid his hand over hers, their fingers twining together. 

‘Yes.’

Her face split in a smile. ‘I love you.’

Even after a year, it still felt like a revelation to hear that. To know that every voice he’d heard had been lying, and that there had still been a chance, still hope, still someone to care. If his fate had been predestined, it was this; their precious dyad, the connection they shared that could travel the stars. He had not been born a murderer or a monster. That was the Emperor’s poison. He would still have to make amends for what he’d done, now he had the strength. Now he was certain of who he was and who he could be. 

Things felt right, for the first time.

*

He is neither here nor there. He is standing in a river that sometimes surges around his knees but mostly ebbs, slowly, towards mist. When the sky clears, it is deep black and peppered with an infinite number of unfamiliar stars. Sometimes he sees others - out there, in the distance - and hears their whispers. But mostly it is him, alone. 

If he ever gets tired he knows - somehow - that he will just need to lie down and let the water take him. Wherever it leads - wherever it wants him to go.

Rey is a pilot star in the force, like the famous stars marked on maps as navigational waypoints. If he looks, he knows he will find her - wherever she is in the known and unknown parts of the galaxy. 

He is meditating in his chamber on the Finalizer when he hears an intake of breath behind him and the strange scent of saltwater breezes through the airlocked room. Beads of water cling to her skin; wherever Luke’s island is, it’s been raining. His room is antiseptic and grey, but her face glows with the warmth of a fire. When he leans closer, he can smell sharp smoke. 

In the elevator to Snoke’s throne room, she is terrified; he feels terror course from her like a silent scream. Above all, she is determined. He can see it in the set of her jaw, her furrowed brow as she tells him she will turn him. _We’ll see._ He is almost defeated by the urge to kiss her. In those visions the force visits upon him at night, she looks much the same.

Certain dreams are gifts from the force; he knows that from his training. Both Snoke and Luke put faith in visions. He sleeps night after night in his narrow cot on the Steadfast and dreams the same dream, the one where she takes his hand in the throne room after all. One night, he dreams of the dark throne of the Sith. He watches her command a fleet to rise.

In her mind, he sees an island. The sea is calm and still and stretches far past the horizon. He feels an ache that cuts to the bone, the cold of a night in the desert. In fleeting moments, he is certain he would burn his empire to ashes to have her. 

The Emperor throws him into the chasm on Exegol. Lightning strikes, and his vision goes white. Then they call, the ones who have always been there, just beyond the mist - they call out, and he wakes up on a rocky outcrop with broken bones and a mouthful of blood.

His mother whispers in his ear, and her voice is better than all the healing balms and bacta treatment in the galaxy.

So he climbs. 

The surface is within reach when he feels Rey die. Like a punch to the gut, taking the breath away from him. The distance seems farther now, the air more stale, but he puts one hand in front of the other, ignoring the scrape and complaint of bones, and he climbs.

Any time he has left is borrowed. So there is only one thing left to do.

She breathes, at last, and says his name, and kisses him, and the kiss is like cold water - and he struggles to keep her in his grasp, focusing only on her, on the grit and blood on her lips, her smile, even as his vision goes dark at the edges and the feeling leaves his broken fingers, and her lovely face knits with a frown -

He is neither here nor there. He stands in a river that sometimes surges at his knees, but mostly ebbs, slowly, towards mist. The sky is black and endless. 

He walks on, towards a star. 

*

_Snips,_ the voice calls out. _Do you see that?_

Anakin isn’t in this place, she’s certain of it, although he sometimes chooses to talk to her, from wherever he is - beyond? Wherever they all go when they’re done. Maybe she only imagines he’s talking to her, because it can get lonely sometimes, hanging out with ghosts she never met in life, in this in-between place that is outside of time and space. 

Ahsoka nods. She sees it, the ragged, broken figure clambering his way out of the crack in the floor. Towards the body in the centre of the room, just about where the throne was only minutes ago. The girl, so small, somehow younger in death - the one who really makes Ahsoka want to cry, because that’s another vital life spent, another one who should have had a fair shot at living. Who shouldn’t have had to die here, like this. 

‘I see it,’ she says. ‘Your grandson.’

Anakin makes a noise somewhere between a tut and laughter. Yes, his proud, turbulent grandson, the one with the poisoned mind. 

‘Skywalkers,’ Ahsoka mutters. 

Then they watch, in silence, as the scene plays out. As the last Skywalker takes the girl in his arms, gives over the tiny reserves of energy he has left so she can wake and breathe and smile and kiss him. So he can die instead of her. 

Another waste. Ahsoka pinches the bridge of her nose, sighs.

‘Skyguy,’ she says, to the air behind her, where she knows Anakin, somewhere, is smiling that lopsided smile, with whatever peace he has found. ‘I think I know what I have to do.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I'm sorry it took me so long to upload the final chapter - unsurprisingly, things have been a little busy lately. That's it done, and if I have time, I hope to be working on some new Reylo stuff soon~
> 
> Thanks so much for reading, and for being here through my Reylo ~working on my feelings~ journey! Hope you're all keeping safe and well <3


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